BEYOND WORDS: READING AND WRITING IN A VISUAL AGE … · FYI David Hockney (b. 1937) was an important figure inEngland’s Pop Art movement before moving to Southern California in

ALLYN & BACON/LONGMANwww.ablongman.com

BEYOND WORDS: READING ANDWRITING IN A VISUAL AGE© 2006

John RuszkiewiczDaniel AndersonChristy Friend

ISBN 0-321-27601-9

S A M P L E C H A P T E RThe pages of this Sample Chapter may have slight variations in final published form.

SA

MP

LE

CH

AP

TE

R

Visit www.ablongman.com/replocator to contact your local Allyn & Bacon/Longman representative.

Chapter begins on next page >>

161

Which of these two images most closely matches your own experiences and

associations with swimming pools? Why? Which specific details in the image

seem familiar?

Do you have associations or experiences with pools that aren’t represented

here? If so, what are they?

Still from Dogtown and Z-Boys (2001)

160

David Hockney, A Bigger Splash (1967)

FYI David Hockney (b. 1937) was an important figure inEngland’s Pop Art movement before moving to SouthernCalifornia in the early 1960s. He has created several seriesof swimming pool images in a variety of media, of which thebest known is 29 Paper Pools (1978). Responding to theobservation that much of his work omits human figures, heonce said, “The main reason for that is that I have wantedthe viewer to become the figure.”

What’s in This Chapter?

In this chapter, you’ll see images of many different places. Some arepaintings and photographs depicting natural landscapes; others show-case the built spaces of city and suburban environments. Others—suchas William Eggleston’s photographs of Memphis—focus on sites wherewild and cultivated environments come together. These images presenta range of purposes and points of view. Some, like Alice Attie’s pho-tographs of Harlem, preserve moments in our history or to document un-familiar cultures. Still others, such as the Web sites advertisingJamaica, use places to promote particular attitudes.

Yet as our discussion of swimming pools suggests, places don’t existonly in pictures. We also experience them directly, meaning that suchenvironments and the ways we interact with them can affect what we doand how we think. So throughout the chapter, we also discuss the struc-ture and design of places like homes, parks, and restaurants. We’ll evenrevisit Dogtown and Z-Boys as we consider how skateboarders and othergroups find unexpected uses for older environments. We’ll challenge youto engage in the on-site observation and description of such places andto interpret them using many of the same strategies you’d use to ex-plore a photo or an essay. All of these examples, we hope, will encour-age you to think about relationships between place and identity that youmight apply in your reading and composing.

1 6 3

It’s hard to imagine a space more symbolic of the American dream than theswimming pool. For many of us, pools are part of the landscape of grow-ing up: As toddlers, we splash in backyard wading pools; as children, we

brave the high diving board at summer camp; in high school, we rent movieslike Spring Break Beach Party and spend vacations working on the perfect tan.Pools are part of our cultural landscape, too. Owning a private pool is a uni-versally recognized sign of financial success, and glamorous poolside shots arestaples of the celebrity profiles that appear in popular magazines.

It’s not surprising, then, that swimming pools have been pictured in manydifferent ways. Consider the two images that open this chapter. Both depictsuburban swimming pools built during the 1960s and 1970s in California—but there the similarities end.

The pool in David Hockney’s painting A Bigger Splash evokes an affluent,leisure-oriented lifestyle often associated with California. Rendered in sunnyblues, yellows, and pinks, the scene is composed of even surfaces and straightlines. There are no human figures to disturb the peaceful scene—only thewhite trace of the swimmer’s splash. We can almost imagine ourselves step-ping through the frame and jumping into the water.

In contrast, the pool in the still from director Stacy Peralta’s skateboarding doc-umentary Dogtown and Z-Boys is neither restful nor inviting. Here the elegantimage of the suburban pool is turned literally upside down. The pool itself is nolonger the focal point; instead, it serves as a backdrop for the acrobatic maneu-vers of 1970s skateboarding icon Tony Alva. Nor is this pool a well-tended par-adise: It has been drained of water, the diving board is pockmarked with rust,and the surrounding lawn is overgrown. Alva, too, uses the pool in a radicallydifferent way. Rather than slipping smoothly into the space, as Hockney’s imag-ined swimmer does, Alva defies gravity, hovering above the rim at a 90-degreeangle to the ground, poised in the split second before hurtling downward. We’retempted to step backwards to avoid what seems like an inevitable crash.

What should we make of these two very different swimming pools? Why pay somuch attention to describing two scenes that, if we walked past them tomorrow,we might not even notice? It’s because everyday places—shopping malls, fast-food restaurants, classrooms, parks, and yes, even swimming pools—shape ourlives. They define where and how we work, play, eat, do business, express our-selves, and communicate. When artists create images of places, they capturesomething of these identities. And so do you when you make sense of the placesyou encounter in your reading, your composing, and your daily life.

162 I N T R O D U C T I O N

IntroductionIntroduction

1 6 5

What do you see?When you encounter a place oran image of one, first ask,“Where am I?” and “What sortof place is this?” Knowingsome terminology that artists,urban planners, and other pro-fessionals use to talk aboutspaces will help you draw someuseful distinctions.

Natural environments exist apart from human civilization. In their purestform, they incorporate nothing man-made—composed of the terrain, climate,geological formations, and animal and plant life. Artistic depictions of thenatural world, such as landscapes and seascapes, have long encouraged view-ers to reflect on the power and beauty of untouched nature and to considerthe place of human beings in the larger world.

Consider, for example, two landscape photographs. The Grand Canyon land-scape, photographed by David Muench, with its delicate colors and dramaticpatterns of sunlight and shadow, creates a breathtaking scene. Muench sayshis photo celebrates the “mystical forces of nature that shape all our des-tinies” and expresses his “commitment to preserve our wild lands . . . to im-prove and maintain a balance between economy and ecology.”

Now consider a photograph showing a human presence in the landscape. Thephotograph of the Airstream trailer, for instance, features majestic rock forma-

1 6 4 R E A D I N G L A N D S C A P E S A N D E N V I R O N M E N T S

It’s easy to ignore places or to regard them simply as neutral backdrops forwhat we do. Certainly many of the surroundings we experience seem soordinary that it’s difficult to imagine them as meaningful: How does one

analyze a barren stretch of interstate? Or a convenience store that looks ex-actly like every other 7-Eleven in town?

Cultural meanings and patterns are easier to spot when they appear in spec-tacular landscapes—Las Vegas’s neon skyline clearly says something aboutAmerican attitudes toward money, and the 1,776-foot-high Freedom Tower inNew York City will dramatically embody patriotic ideals. Yet the same habitsof observation that enable you to spot these patterns can also help you findmeanings in less obvious places. When you see a landscape image or examinea particular space, ask yourself the following questions:

Reading Landscapes and Environments

Airstream trailer atthe Grand Canyon

David Muench, Grand Canyon


Art, shown on the previous page. Its design, which incorporates large indoorgalleries, clearly serves the practical function of housing the city’s art collec-tions. Yet its unusual shape and construction suggest additional purposes. Themuch-photographed “wings” on the roof, designed to move continually withthe breezes in one of the nation’s windiest cities, express both the architect’saesthetic vision and the city’s commitment to the arts. Not incidentally, thespectacular roof makes the museum a splendid tourist attraction.

Large, impressive public buildings aren’t the only built spaces worth analyz-ing, though. Smaller, more ordinary places like laundromats and barbershopsalso serve important functions and influence the people who use them everyday. Melissa Ann Pinney draws our attention to one such space in her photoof a diaper-changing room at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Pinney’s photo might lead us to ask several questions: Where are the chil-dren’s fathers? Why aren’t they helping? Why aren’t these spaces larger anddesigned to make this sort of work physically less awkward? Why is the space

1 6 7

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

Stions similar to those in Muench’s image, but the adjoining highway, completewith travel trailer and gawking tourists, is just as prominent. What sort oflandscape is this? you might ask. A nature scene, a highway scene, or some-thing in between? And in fact, even natural landmarks as seemingly un-touched as the Grand Canyon are continually influenced by the park adminis-trators who monitor the placement of roads and trails, manage touristactivities and trash pickup, and implement conservation plans.

So when you encounter either a natural environment or an image depictingone, pay attention: What natural features are present? What makes the placeunique, powerful, beautiful, or worth noticing? What relationship does thisplace have to human activities and structures? And from what vantage pointare you looking at this place?

In contrast to natural environments, built environments and spaces are partlyor wholly made by human beings. Whether these spaces have been casuallycrafted (such as a children’s treehouse or a small roadside produce stand) orformally designed by a professional city planner, architect, or landscape engi-neer (such as a museum or park), all serve specific functions and reflect thechoices of the people who imagined them. Consider the Milwaukee Museum of

Melissa Ann Pinney, Disney World, Orlando, Florida (1998)

“Although I have always been drawn to what is hidden, especiallyconcerning women’s experiences, I couldn’t say for certain that I would have recognized the secluded diaper-changing scene at

Disney World as apossible subject untilmy daughter, Emma,was born. . . . Thesephotographs . . . are an expression of my interests in feminineidentity and the specific qualities oflight and place.”

—MELISSA ANN PINNEY

The Milwaukee Museum of Art

1 6 9

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S


so dark and institutional-looking (and at the Magic Kingdom, no less)? Whatdo these features say about parenting and gender in our culture? Finally, doesPinney’s point of view affect how we react to this scene? Might another pho-tographer’s rendition show us a different changing room?

When you analyze a built space or an image of one, then, keep a few key ques-tions in mind: What function does the space serve? Of what materials is it con-structed, and how is it arranged? How does its design affect the way in whichpeople use it? And from what vantage point are you looking at the space?

What is it about?We don’t often think about it, but places and representations of them areusually constructed with a purpose. A travel writer, for instance, may de-scribe a locale in order to encourage tourists to visit. A university might lo-cate parking on its outskirts and incorporate walking paths in order to fostera pedestrian-friendly atmosphere.

You can find clues to the purpose of a place by identifying its focal points:What do you notice first? What takes center stage? Where are the most im-portant objects and activities? Consider artist-writer Alice Attie’s documen-tary photo series Harlem in Transition. In this series, Attie directs viewers’ at-tention to Harlem storefronts, highlighting the contrast between small,locally owned businesses—often boarded up or on the verge of going under—and the gleaming corporate chain stores now moving into this New York Cityarea. The stark differences suggest Attie’s purpose: to document this olderneighborhood culture before it vanishes entirely.

C O N S I D E R

1. List five natural environments and five built environments that you find especially inter-esting. Then analyze one of them critically. Pose questions about the place like thoseraised about the natural and built environments in this section. If possible, find an imageor a description of the place (it may be your own photo, a journal entry, or a video), andshare it with your classmates, along with your critical analysis.

2. In the library or on the Web, browse through several dictionaries of architectural, urbanplanning, or art terminology. What terms do you see that you might find useful in readingand writing about places?

Alice Attie, photographs from the series Harlem in Transition (2000)

1 7 1

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

To what does it relate?Images of places (and places themselves) never exist in isolation. Knowingsomething about an artist’s experiences and his or her thoughts about a par-ticular place—the biographical context—can help you better understand itsmeanings. For example, if you glance at the painting shown here, you mightsimply see a field lush with nearly ripe wheat and populated by a flock ofbirds. The scene might suggest any number of associations.

Now consider that many scholars believe that this was the last canvasPostimpressionist painter Vincent van Gogh completed before committingsuicide, shooting himself in a field similar to the one pictured here. As theo-rist John Berger observes in his book Ways of Seeing, this fact irrevocablychanges what you see: Perhaps the vivid colors and rough brushwork beginto take on an ominous quality. Perhaps the crows—carrion-eating birds—now


C O N S I D E R

1. Take another look at Attie’s photographs (see previous page). What specific details of ar-chitecture, signage, décor, or other elements seem to characterize the chain storefrontsversus the locally owned businesses? What social, cultural, or economic factors do youthink might contribute to these different styles?

2. Why do you think Attie includes a human figure in the photos of the Starbucks andDisney Store franchises? Write a few sentences explaining what you think the man in thesuit and the girl on the bicycle add to the images.

C O M P O S E

3. Harlem is a neighborhood with a rich heritage. Do some research in the library or on theInternet to learn about the history and culture of the area, and then look again at Attie’sphotographs. Write a paragraph discussing how these images fit into your overall impres-sion of the place.

4. If you were asked to create a documentary to preserve a place you know well, what placewould you choose? Why? Write a paragraph or two explaining what you would include inyour documentary and why.

C H A L L E N G E

5. In her introduction to Harlem in Transition, Attie writes, “This transitional moment inHarlem has larger implications for a world in which small communities are being increas-ingly forced to confront global economic power.” What do you think she means by thisstatement? Can you think of other communities and areas in the world that are facingsimilar transitions?

Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Crows (1890)

look predatory or foreboding. The landscape may seem less peaceful andmore desolate. The scene is no longer quite the same.

Of course, no single biographical detail, even such a dramatic one, can fullydetermine the meaning of this or any image. Your response might changeagain upon learning that Van Gogh included crows in several other paintingsand that in at least one of his letters he referred to the birds as friendly pres-ences. The contexts within which we interpret places and images of them arecomplicated and constantly evolving.

Historical and social contexts add other dimensions of meaning. For in-stance Van Gogh and other artists during the late nineteenth century workedat a time when industrialism was rapidly altering rural life across Europe, dis-placing workers who had made the land their livelihood and blurring the linebetween city and country. Several of Van Gogh’s early paintings depict thepoverty and backbreaking labor endured by rural workers. So in examiningWheat Field with Crows, you might investigate how this landscape compareswith other rural scenes painted during the era or with commentary on rural is-sues appearing elsewhere. Your research might lead you to speculate that theswirling skies in this painting—a common feature in Van Gogh’s landscapes—reflect the rapid changes in rural life.

Van Gogh’s troubled portraits of rural landscapes can also be read in the con-text of earlier and later art that engages similar issues. Dorothea Lange,whose photographs you’ll see in several chapters in this text, explores suchissues in a different era and medium by documenting the struggles faced byrural Americans during the Great Depression. Today, you’ll see similar themesplayed out in the images and texts created by proponents of organic farmingand farmworker advocacy groups objecting to corporate farming operations.

C O N S I D E R

1. Which bits of contextual information most strongly affect your interpretation of the VanGogh images (see pages 13 and 14)? Why?

2. What would you say to someone who argued that the Starry Night mural isn’t “real art”?Would you agree or disagree? What reasons would you give to support your position?

C O M P O S E

3. On the Web, do a keyword search on “Van Gogh” and list some of the different media andcontexts in which this painter’s work has been reproduced—for example, as posters, T-shirts, and wallpaper. Write a paragraph or two discussing how you think the meaning ofthe images might vary across these different contexts.

4. Choose an image of a place that you especially like and do research in the library or onthe Internet to discover what you can about the biographical, social, and historical con-texts in which the image was created. Write two or three paragraphs summarizing yourfindings and then a paragraph commenting on whether and how this informationchanges your response to the image.

How is it composed?How we experience a place depends a great deal on how it is structured andarranged, either by artists representing places or by designers giving shape tobuilt environments. In traditional landscape painting and photography, artistsfrequently use one-point perspective—a way of rep-resenting space in which everything recedes to asingle horizon point. Images structured in this wayemphasize what’s placed in the foreground of theimage, the area nearest to the viewer and farthestfrom the horizon line. Items located in the back-ground, near or at the horizon, are deemphasized.The scene depicting Ulysses Grant’s Tomb in NewYork City exemplifies this pattern. In the foreground,we see the well-populated and carefully manicuredgrounds surrounding the landmark, which is locatedin the center of the image, set back but still in theforeground. The area behind the tomb recedes intothe distance, obscuring all that might distract fromthe artist’s subject.

1 7 3

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

SFinally, place images can take on different meanings depending on the physi-cal context in which they appear. Look at the mural in the photograph be-low, a rendition of Van Gogh’s famous painting Starry Night, painted by mid-dle-school art students on the back wall of a neighborhood grocery store inSouth Carolina. How does the irregular brick surface, punctuated with plumb-ing pipes, affect what you see? What about the surrounding landscape, com-plete with trash cans, telephone wires, and traffic? Or the fact that childrencreated the image as a community project and as part of their education inthe arts? Your response to the mural is likely quite different from the reactionyou would have to seeing Van Gogh’s original painting, specially lit and po-sitioned on a museum wall.

Brad Station, Stratton children’s mural,Columbia, South Carolina (2004)

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night (1880)

Lithograph of the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant

C O N S I D E R

1. In your opinion, how effective is the point of view Meiselas adopts in her photo of the buspassengers (see previous page)? Think of two or three alternative points of view shemight have chosen, and write a few sentences discussing how each might suggest a dif-ferent interpretation of the scene.

2. Imagine what Riboud’s photo (see above) would look like without the window frames.How might you experience the place differently? Might you be inclined to group the peo-ple in different ways? If so, how?

3. Find and examine several picture postcards of tourist sites in your city or state, payingspecial attention to what’s in the background and foreground of each image. Do you seeany patterns? What tends to be emphasized and deemphasized?

C O M P O S E

4. Take photographs of your bedroom or another familiar place from five or six different an-gles. Write a paragraph discussing how each angle creates a different impression. Whichimage is your favorite? Why?

5 Find a snapshot from a family vacation, school field trip, or other excursion, and usephoto editing software (for a digital photo), scissors, or a black marker to frame the im-age differently. Then write a paragraph analyzing how the changes affect the way viewerswould interpret the scene.

1 7 4 R E A D I N G L A N D S C A P E S A N D E N V I R O N M E N T S 1 7 5

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

Writers and artists also use point of view to create angles from which we cansee the image or the design. Where are we asked to “stand” or to look? In thisstriking photograph from her book El Salvador, photojournalist SusanMeiselas depicts bus passengers lined up by soldiers for a search. The camerais positioned above the passengers, at a slight angle, rather than at eye level asa typical news shot might be. But even more unexpected is the way the highangle of the sun interacts with the point of view in the photo. The camera an-gle and stark shadows cast on the wall invite us to infer much of what is tak-ing place as the soldiers conduct their searches.

The structural technique of framing also contributes to the composition of animage. Is the image divided into sections? If so, what occupies each section?How are elements within the image spaced in relation to each other?

Marc Riboud’s “A Street in Old Beijing” reveals a bustling scene outside agovernment-run art business, which Riboud photographed through a nearbyshop window. The frames of the window break the image into six smaller sec-tions, each of which can be read as an individual scene. The top left-handsection, for example, encloses the gilded sign above the business, whichreads, “Prosperity.” The people captured in the bottom frames emerge as indi-viduals busy with their lives, not equally aware of being photographed.According to critic Ian Jeffrey, Riboud’s framing device in this photographemphasizes his view that “individuality in China survived the persistence of[Communist] ideology, and showed itself in the kind of glances and smalltransactions carried out here.”

Susan Meiselas, Soldiers Search Bus Passengers along the Northern Highway (1981)

Marc Riboud, A Street in Old Beijing (1965)


What details matter?Sometimes the smallest details make a big difference in the impact of an im-age or the design of a space. Would a Coca-Cola taste the same, if we drank itout of a yellow can? Would you patronize a fancy restaurant lit by fluores-cent lights and staffed by waiters in polyester smocks and hairnets? Look forkey details when you consider places, whether they are rendered in environ-ments, images, or words.

For instance, if you glance quickly at Stephen Shore’s streetscape of El Paso,two details will likely catch your eye: the human figure and the colors. Thatlone person staring at the scene from the foreground of the image establishesthe point of view and reminds us that we’re looking at a constructed image,not a “real” place. At the same time, the sunny pastels of the buildings give anostalgic, fifties-style feel to the shot, despite the fact that the photo wastaken in the mid-1970s. Imagine the same scene photographed in plain blackand white, without the human figure, and you’ll get a sense of how importantthese two details are.

The first thing you might notice about Gueorgui Pinkhassov’s “Tokyo,” on theother hand, is the unusual pattern of the light, which filters through windowblinds and covers the space and its inhabitants with a dappled pattern. Butthere are other details in the image as well. What can be said about the layoutof the central hallway or the human figures in the image? The figures seemconfined by the space and unlikely to encounter each other.

1 7 7

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

Gueorgui Pinkhassov,Tokyo: Hotel in AkasakaArea (1996)

Stephen Shore, El Paso Street,El Paso, Texas (1975)

C O N S I D E R

1. Besides the use of a human figure and of color, what other significant details do you noticein Shore’s portrait of El Paso (see previous page)? What do these details add to your un-derstanding of the image?

2. Think about a place you visit regularly—a coffeehouse, a basketball court, or your calcu-lus classroom, for instance. What particular details, in your opinion, combine to create itsparticular atmosphere? If those details changed, how would people experience the placedifferently?

C O M P O S E

3. Carefully reexamine Pinkhassov’s photo (see above), and then compose a short narrativethat accounts for what’s going on in the image. Use specific details from the photographin your narrative.

4. Choose a place image you find interesting, and write a few paragraphs analyzing theartist’s use of color, lighting, lines, human figures, and significant objects.

Of course, artists and designers use many other kinds of details—for example,the presence or location of objects or the facial expressions of human figures inan image—to create particular impressions of a place. And thus you’ll need tolook closely at each space you encounter to discern the little things that createa specific atmosphere. Does the effect come from color? Lighting? The place-ment of key objects or human figures? Lines? Or you might discover entirelydifferent patterns. The important thing is to read critically—to pay attention.

Additional practice readinglandscapes and environments.

www.ablongman.com/beyondwords10

Subu rb i a : Ame r i can D ream o r “Geography o f Nowhe re”?

If you ask a dozen people to name the place that holds the most memoriesand emotional associations, you’ll likely get a single response: “Home.”For many Americans, “home” means a single-family house with a lawn

and a garage in a residential neighborhood filled with similar houses—inother words, a suburb.

But what you may not know is that the suburban house became the typicalhome in this country only within the past fifty years—and that in much of therest of the world, “home” more commonly refers to urban apartments, single-family farms, or small villages. As Robert Fishman explains in his bookBourgeois Utopias, in the years immediately following World War II, eco-nomic, industrial, and governmental initiatives converged so that “for thefirst time in any society, the single-family detached house was broughtwithin the economic grasp of the majority of households”—working-class andmiddle-class alike.

But fifty years into this transformation, scholars are calling attention to ef-fects that developers and the homeowners who flocked to their developmentsdidn’t anticipate. James Kunstler, for example, complains that the suburban-ization of American cities has decentralized jobs and housing, weakenedcommunity identity and civic involvement, and increased both pollution andconsumption—a state of affairs he calls a “geography of nowhere.”

No matter where you grew up, you should be able to see, in the images andreadings that follow, evidence of this complicated legacy of suburbanization.As you read and study this material, think about how you visualize “home”and what you—and others—do with the space in which you live.

Places We Live

1 7 91 7 8 P L A C E S W E L I V E

C O N S I D E R

1. Examine the floor plan for “The Dover,” a prefabricated home advertised to first-time buy-ers by Sears, Roebuck during the early 1950s, and speculate: What sort of buyer wouldhave considered this a “dream house”? How does this house’s size and layout compareto the places you’ve lived? Is this a house you’d aspire to buy? Why or why not?

2. Think about the focal points and the point of view in the photo of the home buyers. Whatdraws your attention: The couple? The car? The houses? What do you think the photogra-pher wants you to focus on? Why?

1 8 0 P L A C E S W E L I V E

Artists and photographers over the years have been fascinated by images ofsuburban life. Here are some scenes that depict suburban scenes and mores,including a still from the 1998 film Pleasantville, which portrayed a black-and-white suburb sitcom world that gradually blossomed into a richer andmore colorful version of life.

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

C H A L L E N G E

6. Do an informal survey of students on your campus, asking this question: “Does your fam-ily live in the suburbs?” As people respond, pay attention to any positive or negative im-plications in their answers. After completing your survey and considering the results, re-visit your definition of suburbanite, and revise it as necessary.

“We’re really happy. Our kidsare healthy, we eat goodfood, and we have a nicehome.” From Bill Owens,Suburbia (1973)

Still from Pleasantville (1998)

1950s family room from Life magazine

William Eggleston, Memphis (c. 1972)

C O M P O S E

3. Drawing on your experience and on the text and images shown on the preceding page,put together an ad—including a floor plan—for the kind of single-family living space youthink would appeal to a wide range of today’s consumers. Focus on the space itself andon the neighborhood or development where it will be located.

4. On the Web or in a newspaper, browse through some advertisements for new housing de-velopments and compare them to the ad for “The Dover.” What differences and similari-ties do you see? Write a paragraph or two summarizing your findings.

5. Without consulting a dictionary, write a one-paragraph definition of suburbanite.


The McMansion Next Door:Why the American House Needs a MakeoverC a t h l e e n M c G u i g a n (2003)

Design is everywhere, right? Your toothbrush, your running shoes, yourcool-looking couch, your latte machine, your laptop. OK, no one would

mistake Indiana for Italy, but you can finally buy good design almost anywhere,from the mall to the Internet. But there’s one big-ticket item in this countrythat is virtually untouched by the hand of a good designer: your house.

Most new off-the-rack houses aren’t so much designed as themed:Mediterranean, French country, faux Tudor, neo-Colonial. These houses mayoffer—on the high end—every option money can buy, from a media room toa separate shower for the dog. But the market actually gives consumers littletrue choice: the developer house, in most price ranges, is amazingly similarfrom coast to coast, across different climate zones and topographies.

If you ripped off the roofs—and the turrets and gables and fake widow’swalks—or peered into the windows—double-hung, round, Palladian, pic-ture (often in the same house!)—you’d find essentially the same thing: a vastfoyer with chandelier; formal living and dining rooms (rarely used); open-plan kitchen/family room; master suite and bedrooms; many bathrooms; atleast a three-car garage. It makes me wonder whatever happened to the

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

SC O N S I D E R

1. Examine the depictions of suburban family life from the 1950s to the 1970s on the previ-ous page. (Released in 1998, Pleasantville depicts a 1950s suburb.) Which images seemthe most positive, and which seem ambivalent or negative? In which of these places wouldyou most like to live? Why?

2. In compiling Suburbia, Bill Owens asked the families he photographed to comment onthe pictures and then used their words as captions. What does the caption of “We’re re-ally happy” reveal about the couple in the photograph on page 23? Do you think thecaption is an effective one? Why or why not?

3. Look closely at the placement of people in the photographs. Which arrangement do youfind most effective? Most interesting? Why? Which is least interesting? Which seemsmost natural or authentic? Which seems least natural?

4. Think about the use of color film versus black and white in these images and about whythe photographers made the choices they did. If you had to illustrate an essay on theAmerican suburb, would you choose color or black-and-white film? Why do you thinkPleasantville uses both black and white and color?

C O M P O S E

5. Examine the photos for clues to the different eras they represent. Make a list of the cluesyou find for each image, and then explain how these details affect the photos and howyou react to them.

6. Imagine that you work at Life, the renowned picture magazine, and have been asked toadd captions to any two of the photos. Compose captions that you think would be ap-propriate. Then compose new captions for the two photos appropriate for one of the fol-lowing placements: a history textbook on America in the twentieth century, a 1950s ad-vertisement for life insurance, a modern-day humorous greeting card (you choose theoccasion), or a current Web site for an organization critical of Americans’ materialism.Explain the differences in point of view, tone, and style between the two sets of captions.

Exurbia: The New Suburban FrontierIf you live in a suburban neighborhood today, chances are that it doesn’tmuch resemble the original tract home developments of the fifties, with rowafter row of nearly identical homes. As economic and technological develop-ments drive new-home construction ever farther away from urban centers,the character of new suburban communities is rapidly changing. The textsand images here explore some of these newest developments, areas often re-ferred to as “edge cities” or “exurbia.”

spending on residential construction will continue to rise.” Bully forthem—and for the folks in the real-estate and financing industries whobase value on size not quality.

But finally some people are saying “Enough already.” Sarah Susanka, aMinnesota architect, started a mini-movement with her best-selling 1998book, The Not So Big House. Susanka argues that a good architect understandsthe importance of human scale. Under the dome of St. Peter’s, you’re meant tofeel awe. But if your bedroom’s the size of a barn, how cozy can you get?

The eco-conscious hate big houses, too, with the energy cost of heating andcooling all those big empty rooms. And now that McMansions not only arethe staple of new suburbs but are invading older, leafy neighborhoods, builtin place of tear-downs and overpowering the smaller vintage houses nearby,communities from Greenwich, Conn., to Miami Beach are beginning totake action.

Some middle-class people who care about design have opted out of thenew-house market. They’ll remodel an old house, one with an honest patinaof history that all the money in the world can’t reproduce. And some archi-tects are hatching low-cost plans for the mainstream market. Prefab is hotright now: designs that use factory-built modules are assembled on-site. It’smuch cheaper than conventional construction, and if it’s done well, it canlook great—and modern.

“We have this concept about design and mass culture in America, withTarget, Banana Republic, Design Within Reach,” says Joseph Tanney ofResolution: 4 Architecture, which won a Dwell magazine competition to de-sign a cool house in North Carolina for only $80 a square foot (a customhouse would be $200 to $400 per). The house is prefab, and the firm has halfa dozen more in the works. Seattle architect James Cutler (who designed BillGates’s Xanadu) is working with Lindal Cedar Homes, a national builder, toadapt a wood-and-glass modernist house for modular construction.

“I think there’s a return to an interest in modernism,” says New York architectDeborah Berke, “and I would call it warm modernism, not sleek minimal-ism.” She argues that a younger generation, steeped in a love of cool designand loft living and ready for a first house, isn’t going to buy a mini-McMansion. “That’s where the industry is not reading the social signs yet.”

As more people get into design—even starting with a toothbrush—themore they’ll want their houses to reflect what they value. Flat roof? Peakedroof? It doesn’t really matter: the best design reflects who we are and thetime in which we live. Who knows what our grandchildren might come upwith if someone hands them a crayon and says “Draw a house”?

1 8 5

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

Smodern house, and why the core idea of modernism—that through massproduction, ordinary people could afford the best design—never caught onwhen it came to houses.

Le Corbusier called the house “a machine for living in”—which meant,notes New York architect Deborah Gans, that the house is a tool people con-trol, not the other way round.

The brilliance of the modern house was in the flexible spaces that flowedone to the next, and in the simplicity and toughness of the materials.Postwar America saw a few great experiments, most famously in L.A.’s CaseStudy Houses in the late 1940s and ’50s. Occasionally, a visionary developer,such as Joseph Eichler in California, used good modern architects to designhis subdivisions. Today they’re high-priced collectibles.

Modernist houses, custom-designed for an elite clientele, are still built, ofcourse. But when I recently asked Barbara Neski, who, with her husband,Julian, designed such houses in the 1960s and beyond, why modern neverwent mainstream, she replied, “What happens when you ask a child to drawa house?” You get a box with a triangle on top. A little gabled house still says“home.”

Yet the cozy warmth of that iconic image doesn’t explain the market forneotraditional houses today. Not all these houses are ugly and shoddy:though most are badly proportioned pastiches of different styles, some arebuilt with attention to detail and materials. But, as the epithet McMansionsuggests, they’re just too big—for their lots, for their neighborhoods andfor the number of people who actually live in them. And why do they keepgetting bigger, when families are getting smaller? In 1970, the average newsingle-family house was 1,400 square feet; today it’s 2,300.

The housing industry says that we want bigger and bigger houses. But Ithink they’re not taking credit for their marketing skills. Last year’s annualreport for Pulte Homes, one of the nation’s biggest builders, contains an as-tonishing fact: if you adjust for inflation, houses of the same size and com-parable features are the same price today as they were in the 1970s. Thatmeans that if business is going to grow, the industry has to sell more prod-uct—not just more houses but more square footage. It’s like the junk-food-marketing genius who figured out that people wouldn’t go back for secondsbut they’d pay more upfront to get, say, the 32-ounce Big Gulp.

This year, Pulte predicts, the number of houses built will be only slightlyhigher than last year’s. “More and more of the same might not sound par-ticularly exciting, but it is,” the report says. “That’s because houses . . . willcontinue to get bigger and better, ensuring that real inflation-adjusted


D av i d B r o o k s(2004)

We’re living in the age of the great dispersal. Americans continue tomove from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and West. But the

truly historic migration is from the inner suburbs to the outer suburbs, tothe suburbs of suburbia. From New Hampshire down to Georgia, acrossTexas to Arizona and up through California, you now have the booming ex-urban sprawls that have broken free of the gravitational pull of the citiesand now float in a new space far beyond them. For example, the populationof metropolitan Pittsburgh has declined by 8 percent since 1980, but as peo-ple spread out, the amount of developed land in the Pittsburgh area in-creased by nearly 43 percent. The population of Atlanta increased by 22,000during the 90’s, but the expanding suburbs grew by 2.1 million.

The geography of work has been turned upside down. Jobs used to be con-centrated in downtowns. But the suburbs now account for more rental of-fice space than the cities in most of the major metro areas of the countryexcept Chicago and New York. In the Bay Area in California, suburban SantaClara County alone has five times as many of the region’s larger publiccompanies as San Francisco. Ninety percent of the office space built inAmerica by the end of the 1990’s was built in suburbia, much of it in far-flung office parks stretched along the interstates.

These new spaces are huge and hugely attractive to millions of people.Mesa, Ariz., a suburb of Phoenix, now has a larger population thanMinneapolis, St. Louis, or Cincinnati. It’s as if Zeus came down and startedplopping vast developments in the middle of farmland and the desertovernight. Boom! A master planned community. Boom! A big-box mall.Boom! A rec center and 4,000 soccer fields. The food courts come and thepeople follow. How many times in American history have 300,000-personcommunities materialized practically out of nothing?


FYI David Brooks is a columnist for the New York Times. His latest book, On Paradise

Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense, from which this essay is adapted, was published in 2004 by Simon & Schuster.

Our Sprawling,Supersize Utopia

more choice over which sort of neighborhood to live in. Society becomesmore segmented, and everything that was once hierarchical turns granular.

You don’t have to travel very far in America to see radically different sorts ofpeople, most of whom know very little about the communities and subcul-tures just down the highway. For example, if you are driving across the north-ern band of the country—especially in Vermont, Massachusetts, Wisconsin orOregon—you are likely to stumble across a crunchy suburb. These are placeswith meat-free food co-ops, pottery galleries, sandal shops (because peoplewith progressive politics have a strange penchant for toe exhibitionism). Notmany people in these places know much about the for-profit sector of theeconomy, but they do build wonderful all-wood playgrounds for their kids,who tend to have names like Milo and Mandela. You know you’re in acrunchy suburb because you see the anti-lawns, which declare just how fer-vently crunchy suburbanites reject the soul-destroying standards of conven-tional success. Anti-lawns look like regular lawns with eating disorders. Someare bare patches of dirt, others are scraggly spreads of ragged, weedlike vege-tation, the horticultural version of a grunge rocker’s face.

Then a few miles away, you might find yourself in an entirely different cul-tural zone, in an upscale suburban town center packed with restaurants—one of those communities that perform the neat trick of being clearly sub-urban while still making it nearly impossible to park. The people here tendto be lawyers, doctors, and professors, and they drive around in Volvos,Audis and Saabs because it is socially acceptable to buy a luxury car as longas it comes from a country hostile to U.S. foreign policy.

Here you can find your Trader Joe’s grocery stores, where all the cashiers lookas if they are on loan from Amnesty International and all the snack food is es-pecially designed for kids who come home from school screaming, “Mom, Iwant a snack that will prevent colorectal cancer!’’ Here you’ve got newly reno-vated Arts and Crafts seven-bedroom homes whose owners have developedviews on beveled granite; no dinner party in this clique has gone all the way todessert without a conversational phase on the merits and demerits of Coriancountertops. Bathroom tile is their cocaine: instead of white powder, theyblow their life savings on handcrafted Italian wall covering from Waterworks.

You travel a few miles from these upscale enclaves, and suddenly you’re inyet another cultural milieu. You’re in one of the suburban light-industryzones, and you start noting small Asian groceries offering live tilapia fishand premade bibimbap dishes. You see Indian video rental outlets withmovies straight from Bollywood. You notice a Japanese bookstore, newspa-per boxes offering the Korea Central Daily News and hair salons offeringDynaSky phone cards to Peru.

1 8 9

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

SIn these new, exploding suburbs, the geography, the very landscape of life,is new and unparalleled. In the first place, there are no centers, no recog-nizable borders to shape a sense of geographic identity. Throughout hu-man history, most people have lived around some definable place—atribal ring, an oasis, a river junction, a port, a town square. But in exurbia,each individual has his or her own polycentric nodes—the school, thechurch, and the office park. Life is different in ways big and small. Whenthe New Jersey Devils won the Stanley Cup, they had their victory paradein a parking lot; no downtown street is central to the team’s fans. RobertLang, a demographer at Virginia Tech, compares these new sprawling ex-urbs to the dark matter in the universe: stuff that is very hard to define butsomehow accounts for more mass than all the planets, stars, and moonsput together.

We are having a hard time understanding the cultural implications of thisnew landscape because when it comes to suburbia, our imaginations aremotionless. Many of us still live with the suburban stereotypes laid down bythe first wave of suburban critics—that the suburbs are dull, white-breadkind of places where Ozzie and Harriet families go to raise their kids. Butthere are no people so conformist as those who fault the supposed confor-mity of the suburbs. They regurgitate the same critiques decade afterdecade, regardless of the suburban reality flowering around them.

The reality is that modern suburbia is merely the latest iteration of theAmerican dream. Far from being dull, artificial, and spiritually vacuous, to-day’s suburbs are the products of the same religious longings and the samedeep tensions that produced the American identity from the start. Thecomplex faith of Jonathan Edwards, the propelling ambition of BenjaminFranklin, the dark, meritocratic fatalism of Lincoln—all these inheritanceshave shaped the outer suburbs.

At the same time the suburbs were sprawling, they were getting more com-plicated and more interesting, and they were going quietly berserk. Whenyou move through suburbia—from the old inner-ring suburbs out throughthe most distant exurbs—you see the most unexpected things: lesbian den-tists, Iranian McMansions, Korean megachurches, outlaw-biker subdevelop-ments, Orthodox shtetls with Hasidic families walking past strip malls ontheir way to shul. When you actually live in suburbia, you see that radicallydifferent cultural zones are emerging, usually within a few miles of one an-other and in places that are as architecturally interesting as a piece of alu-minum siding. That’s because in the age of the great dispersal, it becomesmuch easier to search out and congregate with people who are basically likeyourself. People are less tied down to a factory, a mine or a harbor. They have



American sees a family about to pull out of one of those treasured close-inspots just next to the maternity ones, he will put on his blinker and wait forthe departing family to load up its minivan and apparently read a few chap-ters of “Ulysses’’ before it finally pulls out and lets him slide in.

You look out across this landscape, with its sprawling diversity of suburbantypes, and sometimes you can’t help considering the possibility that weAmericans may not be the most profound people on earth. You look outacross the suburban landscape that is the essence of modern America, andyou see the culture of Slurp & Gulps, McDonald’s, Disney, breast enlarge-ments and “The Bachelor.” You see a country that gave us Prozac and Viagra,paper party hats, pinball machines, commercial jingles, expensive ortho-dontia, and Monster Truck rallies. You see a trashy consumer culture thathas perfected parade floats, corporate-sponsorship deals, low-slung jeans,and frosted Cocoa Puffs; a culture that finds its quintessential means ofself-expression through bumper stickers (“Rehab Is for Quitters’’).

Indeed, over the past half century, there has been an endless flow of novels,movies, anti-sprawl tracts, essays and pop songs all lamenting the shallowconformity of suburban life. If you scan these documents all at once, oreven if, like the average person, you absorb them over the course of a life-time, you find their depictions congeal into the same sorry scene. SuburbanAmerica as a comfortable but somewhat vacuous realm of unreality: con-sumerist, wasteful, complacent, materialistic, and self-absorbed.

Disneyfied Americans, in this view, have become too concerned with smalland vulgar pleasures, pointless one-upmanship. Their lives are distractedby a buzz of trivial images, by relentless hurry instead of contemplation, in-formation rather than wisdom and a profusion of unsatisfying lifestylechoices. Modern suburban Americans, it is argued, rarely sink to the level ofdepravity—they are too tepid for that—but they don’t achieve the highestvirtues or the most demanding excellences.

These criticisms don’t get suburbia right. They don’t get America right. Thecriticisms tend to come enshrouded in predictions of decline or culturalcatastrophe. Yet somehow imperial decline never comes, and the social cat-astrophe never materializes. American standards of living surpassed thosein Europe around 1740. For more than 260 years, in other words, Americanshave been rich, money-mad, vulgar, materialistic and complacent people.And yet somehow America became and continues to be the most powerfulnation on earth and the most productive. Religion flourishes. Universitiesflourish. Crime rates drop, teen pregnancy declines, teen-suicide rates fall,along with divorce rates. Despite all the problems that plague this country,social healing takes place. If we’re so great, can we really be that shallow?

1 9 1

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

SOne out of every nine people in America was born in a foreign country.Immigrants used to settle in cities and then migrate out, but now manyhead straight for suburbia, so today you see little Taiwanese girls in the fig-ure skating clinics, Ukrainian boys learning to pitch and hints of cholo cul-ture spreading across Nevada. People here develop their own customs andpatterns that grow up largely unnoticed by the general culture. You go to ascraggly playing field on a Saturday morning, and there is a crowd ofNigerians playing soccer. You show up the next day, and it is all Mexicanskicking a ball around. No lifestyle magazine is geared to the people who livein these immigrant-heavy wholesale warehouse zones.

You drive farther out, and suddenly you’re lost in the shapeless, mostly mid-dle-class expanse of exurbia. (The inner-ring suburbs tend to have tremen-dous income inequality.) Those who live out here are very likely living inthe cultural shadow of golf. It’s not so much the game of golf that influ-ences manners and morals; it’s the Zenlike golf ideal. The perfect humanbeing, defined by golf, is competitive and success-oriented, yet calm andneat while casually dressed. Everything he owns looks as if it is made of ti-tanium, from his driver to his BlackBerry to his wife’s Wonderbra. He hasachieved mastery over the great dragons: hurry, anxiety and disorder.

His DVD collection is organized, as is his walk-in closet. His car is cleanand vacuumed. His frequently dialed numbers are programmed into hisphone, and his rate plan is well tailored to his needs. His casual slacks arewell pressed, and he is so calm and together that next to him, Dick Cheneylooks bipolar. The new suburbs appeal to him because everything is freshand neat. The philosopher George Santayana once suggested thatAmericans don’t solve problems; we just leave them behind. The exurbanitehas left behind that exorbitant mortgage, that long commute, all thoseweird people who watch “My Daughter Is a Slut’’ on daytime TV talk shows.He has come to be surrounded by regular, friendly people who do not scoffat his daughter’s competitive cheerleading obsession and whose wardrobesare as Lands’ End–dependent as his is.

Exurban places have one ideal that soars above all others: ample parking.You can drive diagonally across acres of empty parking spaces on your wayfrom Bed, Bath & Beyond to Linens ’n Things. These parking lots are so bigthat you could recreate the Battle of Gettysburg in the middle and nobodywould notice at the stores on either end. Off on one side, partly obscured bythe curvature of the earth, you will see a sneaker warehouse big enough toqualify for membership in the United Nations, and then at the other endthere will be a Home Depot. Still, shoppers measure their suburban manli-ness by how close they can park to the Best Buy. So if a normal healthy

and vehicles with names like Yukon, Durango, Expedition and Mustang, asif their accountant-owners were going to chase down some cattle rustlerson the way to the Piggly Wiggly. This is the land in which people dream ofthe most Walter Mitty-esque personal transformations as a result of thelow-carb diet, cosmetic surgery, or their move to the Sun Belt.

Americans—seemingly bland, ordinary Americans—often have a remark-ably tenuous grip on reality. Under the seeming superficiality of suburbanAmerican life, there is an imaginative fire that animates Americans andpropels us to work so hard, move so much and leap so wantonly.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that those who “complain of the flatnessof American life have no perception of its destiny. They are not Americans.’’They don’t see that “here is man in the garden of Eden; here, the Genesisand the Exodus.’’ And here, he concluded fervently, will come the finalRevelation. Emerson was expressing the eschatological longing that is theessence of the American identity: the assumption that some culminatinghappiness is possible here, that history can be brought to a close here.

The historian Sacvan Bercovitch has observed that the United States is the ex-ample par excellence of a nation formed by collective fantasy. Despite all theclaims that American culture is materialist and pragmatic, what is strikingabout this country is how material things are shot through with enchantment.

America, after all, was born in a frenzy of imagination. For the first Europeansettlers and for all the subsequent immigrants, the new continent begs to befantasized about. The early settlers were aware of and almost oppressed by theobvious potential of the land. They saw the possibility of plenty everywhere,yet at the start they lived in harsh conditions.Their lives took on a slingshot shape—theyhad to pull back in order to someday shootforward. Through the temporary hardshipsthey dwelt imaginatively in the grandeur thatwould inevitably mark their future.

This future-minded mentality deepeneddecade after decade, century after century.Each time the early settlers pushed West, theyfound what was to them virgin land, and theyperceived it as paradise. Fantasy about the fu-ture lured them. Guides who led and sometimes exploited the 19th-centurypioneers were shocked by how little the trekkers often knew about the sur-roundings they had thrown themselves into, or what would be involved intheir new lives. As so often happens in American history, as happens every dayin the newly sprawling areas, people leapt before they really looked.

1 9 3

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

SNor do the standard critiques of subur-bia really solve the mystery of motiva-tion—the inability of many Americansto sit still, even when they sincerelywant to simplify their lives. Americansare the hardest-working people onearth. The average American works 350hours a year—nearly 10 weeks—morethan the average Western European.

Americans switch jobs more frequently than people from other nations. Theaverage job tenure in the U.S. is 6.8 years, compared with more than a decadein France, Germany and Japan. What propels Americans to live so feverishly,even against their own self-interest? What energy source accounts for all this?

Finally, the critiques don’t explain the dispersion. They don’t explain why somany millions of Americans throw themselves into the unknown everyyear. In 2002, about 14.2 percent of Americans relocated. Compare that withthe 4 percent of Dutch and Germans and the 8 percent of Britons who movein a typical year. According to one survey, only slightly more than a quarterof American teenagers expect to live in their hometowns as adults.

What sort of longing causes people to pick up and head out for the horizon?Why do people uproot their families from California, New York, Ohio andelsewhere and move into new developments in Arizona or Nevada or NorthCarolina, imagining their kids at high schools that haven’t even been builtyet, picturing themselves with new friends they haven’t yet met, fantasizingabout touch-football games on lawns that haven’t been seeded? Millions ofpeople every year leap out into the void, heading out to communities thatdon’t exist, to office parks that are not yet finished, to places where every-thing is new. This mysterious longing is the root of the great dispersal.

To grasp that longing, you have to take seriously the central cliché ofAmerican life: the American dream. Albert Einstein once said that imagina-tion is more important than knowledge, and when you actually look atmodern mainstream America, you see what a huge role fantasy plays even inthe seemingly dullest areas of life. The suburbs themselves are conservativeutopias, where people go because they imagine orderly and perfect lives canbe led there. This is the nation of Hollywood, Las Vegas, professionalwrestling, Elvis impersonators, Penthouse letters, computer gamers, grownmen in LeBron James basketball jerseys, faith healers, and the whole rangeof ampersand magazines (Town & Country, Food & Wine) that display perfectparties, perfect homes, perfect vacations, and perfect lives. This is the landof Rainforest Cafe theme restaurants, Ralph Lauren WASP-fantasy fashions,Civil War re-enactors, gated communities with names like Sherwood Forest


“Suburbia is becoming the most important single market in the country. It is the suburbanite who startsthe mass fashions—for children, . . . dungarees, vodkamartinis, outdoor barbecues, functional furniture,[and] picture windows. . . . All suburbs are not alike,but they are more alike than they are different.”

—WILLIAM H. WHYTEThe Organization Man (1956)

1 9 5

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

SAmericans found themselves drawn to places where the possibilitiesseemed boundless and where there was no history. Francis Parkman, thegreat 19th-century historian, wrote of his youthful self, “His thoughts werealways in the forest, whose features possessed his waking and sleepingdreams, filling him with vague cravings impossible to satisfy.’’

Our minds are still with Parkman’s in the forest. Our imagination stilltricks us into undertaking grand projects—starting a business, writing abook, raising a family, moving to a new place—by enchanting us with vi-sions of future joys. When these tasks turn out to be more difficult than wedreamed, the necessary exertions bring out new skills and abilities andmake us better than we planned on being.

And so we see the distinctive American mentality, which explains the west-ward crossing as much as the suburban sprawl and the frenzied dot-com-style enthusiasms. It is the Paradise Spell: the tendency to see the presentfrom the vantage point of the future. It starts with imagination—the abilityto fantasize about what some imminent happiness will look like. Then thefuture-minded person leaps rashly toward that gauzy image. He or she issubtly more attached to the glorious future than to the temporary and un-satisfactory present. Time isn’t pushed from the remembered past to thefelt present to the mysterious future. It is pulled by the golden future fromthe unsatisfactory present and away from the dim past.

Born in abundance, inspired by opportunity, nurtured in imagination, spiri-tualized by a sense of God’s blessing and call and realized in ordinary life dayby day, this Paradise Spell is the controlling ideology of national life. Just outof reach, just beyond the next ridge, just in the farther-out suburb or withthe next entrepreneurial scheme, just with the next diet plan or credit cardpurchase, the next true love or political hero, the next summer home or all-terrain vehicle, the next meditation schools, the right moral revival, the rightbeer and the right set of buddies; just with the next technology or after thenext shopping spree—there is this spot you can get to where all tensions willmelt, all time pressures will be relieved and happiness can be realized.

This Paradise Spell is at the root of our tendency to work so hard, consumeso feverishly, to move so much. It inspires our illimitable faith in education,our frequent born-again experiences. It explains why, alone among devel-oped nations, we have shaped our welfare system to encourage opportunityat the expense of support and security; and why, more than people in com-parable nations, we wreck our families and move on. It is the call that makesus heedless of the past, disrespectful toward traditions, short on contem-plation, wasteful in our use of the things around us, impious toward re-straints, but consumed by hope, driven ineluctably to improve, fervently op-timistic, relentlessly aspiring, spiritually alert, and, in this period of humanhistory, the irresistible and discombobulating locomotive of the world.


C O N S I D E R

1. Examine the photo on page 25 that accompanies Cathleen McGuigan’s essay on design.Do you see anything wrong with this house? What do you think of McGuigan’s contentionthat the American house needs a makeover?

2. How does Brooks define “The Paradise Spell”? Do you agree with his explanation of whyAmericans are so mobile?

3. Can you identify any “cultural zones,” as David Brooks describes them, where you live?

4. Using the resources of your local library or the Web, explore the history and cultural im-pact of Levittown, Pennsylvania, a planned community built after World War II to providesingle-family homes for returning GIs and their new families. Summarize your findings ina brief report, illustrated if possible.

5. Write a letter to one of the photographers or writers featured on pages 20–36 in whichyou take issue with his or her representation of suburbia.

6. David Brooks writes that “throughout human history, most people have lived aroundsome definable place.” Write a paragraph in which you describe the geographic center ofyour hometown.

C O M P O S E

7. Cathleen McGuigan writes that “the best design reflects who we are and the time inwhich we live.” Using words and images, design a home that reflects who you are and thetime in which you live.

C H A L L E N G E

Subverting Suburbia: The Radical Landscape of SkateboardingWhile places affect us, they don’t control us. And just as they influence us,we in turn shape them. The readings and images that follow introduce you tothe Z-Boys, a group of skateboarders in the 1970s who refused to be con-tained by the run-down suburban neighborhoods where they lived. The radi-cal and sometimes dangerous or illegal use they made of empty swimmingpools, drainage ditches, and parking lots sparked a renaissance in skateboard-ing—and paved the way for new thinking about how city parks and sports fa-cilities should be designed.

C O N S I D E R

1. Examine the places depicted in the three photos—two empty swimming pools and adrainage pipe. What do you think Stecyk means when he says that skaters “make every-day use of the useless artifacts of the technological burden”? Where do you see evi-dence of this phenomenon in the photos?

2. Which photo do you find most interesting, surprising, or powerful? What elements ofstructure, arrangement, or design do you think contribute to this effect?

3. All of these photos appeared in skateboarding magazines. What purposes do you think “action” photos serve in such publications?

1 9 71 9 6 P L A C E S W E L I V E

“Skaters by their very nature are urban guerrillas. Theskater makes everyday use of the useless artifacts ofthe technological burden. The skating urban anarchistemploys [structures] in a thousand ways that the original architects could never dream of.”

—CRAIG STECYKSkateboarder magazine

“Two hundred years of American technology has unwittingly created a massive cement playground of unlimited potential. But it was theminds of 11-year-olds that could see that potential.”

—CRAIG STECYKSkateboarder magazine

Still from Dogtownand Z-Boys (2001)

CF: The film raises this question of “authenticity,” about what it means tosell out, while getting the word out.

SP: I can tell you this much. There’s no selling out in this film. I hardly madeany money on it. I don’t own the film, and in order to support myself to beable to make it, I had to take two directing jobs, one for a series on Bravo,Influences, which is basically not a creative thing. We made the film in 6months, and for those 6 months, I was probably paid for 2 months of work.But hey, this was a cause, had to do it. Since I was one of the guys, I knew manyof the people who had footage, and was able to bargain for poverty wages. Wespent probably $40,000 on footage that could have cost over $100,000.

■ ■ ■

CF: But you can see how young people, perhaps especially, are anxiousabout the future.

SP: Absolutely. I heard this when I was growing up, becoming what I’m try-ing to become: “You’ve gotta be confident. You’ve gotta go in the room andfill the room with your energy.” I’m sorry, but I’ll never be able to do that.What I’ve learned is, you don’t need confidence. What you need is ideas andthe ability to get up and move forward. You need drive. You only get confi-dence by doing what you do. You don’t get it before. You get it by having theexperiences of falling down and getting back up. I’m sure there are peoplethat do wake up bursting with confidence, but that person’s not me.

CF: Skating is literal about that.

SP: It is. People ask me, “You didn’t wear pads backthen. How did you survive?” We survived becausewe learned how to fall. We grew up in the age ofclay wheels, which were like rocks, and if youdidn’t learn to fall properly, you couldn’tproceed. We wanted the film to be a re-flection of that, the imperfect and sub-versive nature of skateboarding. So webroke it up and put the burn marksand the leader. And if someone wouldget too longwinded, we’d just speed up tothe next part of the film. We didn’t want tohide it, to make it pretty.

CF: It’s refreshing, since the popular standard fordocumentaries now, at least those using still pho-tos, is to zoom in slowly, with fiddle music in thebackground.

1 9 9

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

Director of Dogtown and Z-Boys

C y n t h i a F u c h s (2002)

Stacy Peralta, winner of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival Director’sAward, wears a sweatshirt and sneakers. He’s tossed his backpack

against the wall of this awkwardly large hotel conference room. Peralta’sused to appropriating spaces not designed for him, being a former Z-Boy.That is, a member of Los Angeles’s Zephyr Skate Team, legendary duringthe 1970s and setting the stage for today’s skateboard culture and industry(as in Tony Hawk’s video games, the X Games, etc.). At a time long beforeanyone even thought about building a skate park, the Z-Boys made the side-walks, swimming pools, and schoolyards of Southern California their own.

Peralta has made a documentary, Dogtown and Z-Boys. Narrated by SeanPenn and comprised of Craig Stecyk and Glen E. Friedman’s video footageand photos, as well as interviews and a slamming soundtrack (includingHendrix, Zep, Iggy, and Neil Young), the film traces the impacts of a uniqueconvergence of factors: the low-income environment, the kids’ “latchkey”existence, the invention of the urethane wheel, and the emergence of vertskateboarding. Structured around the diverging stories of two skaters—thebrilliantly athletic Tony Alva and the ethereal Jay Adams—Z-Boys recoversand reflects a particular countercultural moment.

CYNTHIA FUCHS: Even aside from its subcultural subject matter, Dogtownand Z-Boys might inspire young filmmakers.

STACY PERALTA: It does show that filmmaking is accessible to young peo-ple. That’s what my skateboarding videos were all about. I found out somany years later that they empowered kids to pick up cameras and do itthemselves. We made the film Dogtown and Z-Boys look the way it does notonly because it reflects the subject matter, but I have a case to make againstthis age of production value. Everything we see is so well produced that itdoesn’t even look like reality. And it all looks the same—commercials andepisodic TV and motion pictures—they’re all lit so perfectly that it doesn’tlook like any world that I know of. It removes us from that process.

■ ■ ■


You Go Blindfolded:An Interview with Stacy Peralta

CF: How self-conscious were you all, at the time, that you were being “sub-versive,” in whatever ways?

SP: It was more of a thing where we were living in the shadow of the ’60swhen skateboarding had come and gone so quickly, and so we were skate-boarding when there wasn’t such thing as it anymore. We were used to be-ing kicked out of everywhere we went. Everywhere. Skateboarding: doing itis almost like being part of a virus. Viruses come in, occupy the body as ifit’s their own, use the resources of the body to replenish and remake them-selves, and then leave. Skateboarding’s the same way. You see an empty pool:this belongs to you. You use it as long as you can and then you leave. Wenever thought we were doing anything that was interesting, except to our-selves. It’s hard to think it’s going to turn into something else when every-one is telling you that what you’re doing is wrong—“This is wrong. Leave.”Our parents didn’t understand it because there was no context to under-stand it. They looked at us and thought, “You’ll outgrow this.” It had the re-spectability of a yo-yo. Or a hula-hoop. They didn’t realize that what we weredoing was physically demanding, took a lot of pre-thought. And they didn’tsee the beauty in it. It was developed very clandestinely.

■ ■ ■

CF: Can you talk about how Dogtown, the place, affected the art and cultureof skateboarding?

SP: Dogtown is basically West Los Angeles, where all of Los Angeles pointsat the beach. Like we say in the film, the end of Route 66. It’s very rare for acoastal area to be low-income. Now if you look at it, it’s Beverly Hills at theBeach, it’s all money. At the time, Hughes Aircraft and Douglas had aircraftfactories near there, so there were a lot of assembly line workers and rent-controlled apartments. It’s just a beautiful slice of rundown coastline. Andright where we surfed on the beach, there’s a building that today is now afive-star hotel and in the ’40s was a hotel and beach club where movie starswould go. But when we were there, it was a place called Synanon, a place forvery serious drug rehab. But the low-income surroundings allowed peopleto grow, [and] there were a lot of artists there, like Jeff.

And because of the layout of Los Angeles—it’s a very hilly area—you had thisconcentration of schoolyards that had these asphalt waves that you couldn’tfind anywhere else, in that abundance. Plus, Los Angeles is the swimmingpool capital of the world. And not just swimming pools, but movie star pools,with the big sensuous bowls. So we had so many things going for us. Peopleask, would the X Games be where they are today if it wasn’t for you guys? Myanswer is yes, because it would have happened eventually, somewhere else.

2 0 1

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

SSP: [laughs] We went into the matte camera stage, where there’s lights and atable and the camera, and off to the side, a guy who programs the computerto smooth out all those moves. I said, “I don’t want you to program anything,just use the joysticks and do it freehand.” And we wanted to shoot as manydifferent angles as possible and as many speed-ups as possible, so Paul couldhave as many opportunities as possible when he edited. It made it fun. Wedidn’t make this film for anyone in particular, as long as we liked it.

CF: And now that you’re traveling with it, what are you seeing in audiences?

SP: When you make a film like this, you always have in mind that you can’tlose the core audience, or your film gets bad-mouthed. That’s the one thingwe tried to keep our ears attuned to. What’s been a surprise is how manynon-skating people have looked at this as a cultural phenomenon, like,“Wow, we knew this was in America, we’ve seen Tony Hawk, but we didn’tknow why.”

CF: So it’s recovering a history.

SP: Yes. And really, it’s the kids who really have no idea. When Tony Hawksaw this, he goes, “I’ve been involved in skateboarding my whole life, andwhile I knew about this, I didn’t really know the depth, or why it happened.”This is a distinct American phenomenon, with no European influences. Youcan trace it back to Hawaii and surfing. It’s so American.

CF: To that end, your crew was fairly diverse, even given that you weremostly “latchkey” kids of a certain class, and that Jay and you and otherswere so blond.

SP: Right. There was Jeff [Ho], Peggy Oki, Shogo Kubo, Tony [Alva], who’sMexican American. We had a black surfer on our team. Now this is very nor-mal; back then it was very abnormal. When we would leave our area and goskateboarding anywhere else, it was all blond, blue-eyed kids. Today when youlook at skateboarding, it has become very multicultural and very “urban.” Thekids that are doing it today would have been kids 20 years ago, who were ingangs and didn’t like skateboarders. It’s left its surfing roots completely andbecome inner city. Which I think is fantastic: skateboarding’s one of the fewsports you can do where you can leave the designated areas and do it any-where. Every skateboarding kid wants to taste that illicit thrill of doing itwhere he’s not supposed to do it, to try different aspects of his talent on terrainthat wasn’t built for him. And he can potentially make a name for himself bydeveloping a trick someplace that doesn’t belong to him. That’s what’s going tokeep skateboarding subversive. Even though they’re building skateboardingparks, kids are always going to sneak into pools or skateboard on railings infront of buildings where there’s security guards. It’s just part of the process.


2 0 3

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

But we had everything going for us at the start. We had the terrain, the ure-thane wheel, and the weather—the drought. As we call it in the film, it was a“disharmonic convergence,” because no one else wanted it to happen. Buteven that favored us.

■ ■ ■

CF: How does “style”—anti-establishment but also welcoming such main-stream elements as this premiere gauntlet—shape the culture?

SP: Today, we live in an age of extremism. Kids today are like stuntmen, goingas big as you possibly can. But back then, your body form, the carriage of yourbody, was an identification marker for who you were. It was like an anatomicalhangtag. If you looked good, everyone wanted to watch you. It was that as wellas being aggressive. How to look the best you could, at the most critical mo-ment. And that took years to get there. The guys who faked it, you could seeright through them. It was beautiful to watch. I’d see Tony Alva or Jay Adamsand be inspired. I’d go my next run and tuck down more, and feel it.

When you get into a critical moment, you can feel it. We were all pushingeach other, in that regard. If you could carve a pool, and in a critical moment,just kind of tilt your back a little, wow! It’s like a matador. The audience goesinsane. They might not be able to do it, but they can feel it. I don’t want to gettoo crazy with the metaphors here, but if you have a room full of pianos andhit the E key on one, the E keys on all those pianos will hum. It’s the samething. When you hit something true in one human being, it hums througheveryone. We would do that to each other. Some guy would do it, and boom,we were all vibrating to it, thinking, I’ve got to keep the session going.

CF: Did you talk a lot about it, at the time?


C O N S I D E R

1. According to Peralta, why did he decide not to make a traditional documentary filmabout the history of skateboarding, one featuring “still photos with fiddle music in thebackground” (a veiled reference to filmmaker Ken Burns’s Civil War series developed forPBS)?

2. Peralta uses several metaphors—a virus, a room full of pianos humming—to describeskateboarding. If you’ve done a lot of skateboarding, discuss whether or not you thinkthese images capture the flavor of the sport. If you haven’t, which of the metaphors doyou find most suggestive or interesting?

3. Peralta argues that the “disharmonic convergence” of geographic and cultural realities in1970s Dogtown (“basically West Los Angeles”) made possible the skateboarding renais-sance that Dogtown and Z-Boys chronicles. Do you think that the sport would haveevolved differently if this renaissance had happened someplace else—Miami, for exam-ple, or Iowa City? Boston, El Paso, East Saint Louis, or Tupelo? Explain.

C O M P O S E

4. Skateboarders aren’t the only ones who make creative use of traditional spaces. For ex-ample, maybe you’ve transformed your parents’ garage into a rehearsal studio for yourblues band or used the roof of your apartment building as an ice rink after a winter storm.Think of a situation in which you’ve used a place in an unexpected or oppositional way,and write a few paragraphs describing the experience. What features of the place inspiredyou to use it in a new way? What did you hope to accomplish? How did others react?

SP: We did talk about what was possible, and we argued about it a lot. Forinstance, we would do what was called backside kick-turns, where your backis to the wall. We didn’t think it was physically possible to do a frontsidekick-turn. And I told Bob Biniak, “I know it’s possible, and I know you cando it.” I stood on the top of the pool and I egged him on until he did it. Thatwas a huge turning point for us.

CF: You knew Bob could do that kick-turn. How aware were you of eachother’s differences and abilities?

SP: That was something that I think was specific to me. This is one of thereasons I think I succeeded with my own team. I had an ability to look atother people and see they could do things, without an ego attachment to it,like, if he does that, he’ll be better than me. For me, I found the wholeprocess fascinating. I found myself at contests, coaching the other guys. Idon’t know where that came from. It was an innate thing that I just did, andit came in handy later, as a coach and a filmmaker too. Especially for a doc-umentary: you have to be able to walk in and say, “What’s the story here?”

204 C H A P T E R 1 P A Y I N G A T T E N T I O N

Here are some portraits of the island created by the tourist industry.

“Greetings from Jamaica.” This vintage postcard presenting 1950s touristswith an image of a lush, tropical paradise populated by pictorosque local in-habitants.

2 0 5

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

Places We Go

The preceding images and readings looked at how the spaces we call“home” shape our identities. But places that are “not home” often oc-cupy an equally important space in our imaginations. When we travel,

we become the outsider in various locales, and images of these unfamiliarspaces play to our hopes, our desires—and sometimes our fears.

Images of places we visit typically fall into two categories: representationsthat draw us to these places (through travel brochures, advertisements, andthe like) and representations that help us remember them (such as postcards,snapshots, or home videos). Though the images in the first category are usu-ally more generic and those in the second more personal, both kinds share animportant feature: Their purpose is to show the places we visit in the bestpossible light.

But we don’t live in a picture postcard world. Because portraits of places—visual and written—are created from particular perspectives, in particularcontexts, and with particular purposes in mind, they are always incomplete.

The text and images that follow offer varied glimpses of Jamaica, an arche-typal tourist destination. As you study the words and pictures, think aboutthe purpose of each text, what message it sends, and what it leaves out.

Greetings from JamaicaSearch for “Jamaica” on the Internet, and you’ll be inundated with Web sites,most of them selling the Caribbean island as a breathtaking tourist destina-tion. “In Jamaica,” the Jamaican Tourism Board says, “you’ll discover newworlds, and familiar ones too, lots to learn about, and even more to love.”Commercial travel sites call the island a “vacation paradise,” “a kaleidoscopeof beauty,” and “the most precious jewel in the Caribbean.” If you sort yoursearch results carefully, however, you’ll find other representations. Accordingto the Christian aid organization Food for the Poor, for example: “The color-ful images of Jamaica presented in travel brochures don’t tell the whole story.As in most countries, beautiful, affluent places do exist. But in many otherareas of Jamaica, poverty is the norm.” Which of the words and images thatfollow captures the “real” Jamaica? None of them, perhaps. Or maybe all ofthem taken together.

204 P L A C E S W E G O

“The true Garden of Eden.” From www.san-dals.com: “Sandals is a collection of 11 of themost romantic beachfront resorts on earth, cre-ated exclusively for couples in love, in Jamaica,St. Lucia, Antigua and The Bahamas. Discoverthe Caribbean’s most luxurious beachfrontrooms and oceanview suites. Enjoy an astound-ing array of land and watersports, including un-limited golf and scuba diving.”

“Create your own paradise each day.” Fromwww.halfmoon-resort.com: “Welcome to HalfMoon, Montego Bay. A transformation beginswhen guests enter through the ornately carved wrought iron gates thatframe the exclusive Half Moon resort community. A warm island greetingbids you into the sprawling open-air lobby filled with colorful artwork,tropical plants, gracious furnishings and expansive views of the CaribbeanSea and inspires a sense of calm and relaxation. . . . Time is yours whilestaying at Half Moon. Do nothing or take advantage of all that the resorthas to offer. Let each sunrise dictate what the day will bring.”

Vintage postcard of Jamica

Resort hotel in Jamaica

2 0 6

C O N S I D E R

1. What kinds of places are depicted in these tourist-oriented portraits of Jamaica? How dodesign elements in the photographs—such as lighting, color, framing, and point of view—shape your impression of the landscape?

2. What do you notice about the people and activities depicted in these portraits? What dothese patterns tell you about prospective vacationers’ expectations and associationswith this region?

3. Have you ever visited or worked at a tourist resort? How did your experience of the placematch or differ from advertisements for the resort?

4. How does viewing the tourism images with those from Food for the Poor affect your think-ing about Jamaica? Which images seem more powerful to you? Why?

5. Why do you think Food for the Poor chose to use black-and-white photographs on itsWeb site? What other differences do you see in the two groups of images? How do thesedesign differences create different impressions of the place?

C O M P O S E

6. Imagine that you’ve been hired to create a tourism brochure for your hometown or campus.Take several photographs that capture places, activities, and associations you think wouldappeal to prospective visitors, and compose an appropriate caption for each photo.

7. Now take some photographs of the same locale that you would not include in a tourismbrochure, and caption them as well. If you are working with a group, set up an exhibit ofthe contrasting or at least quite different photographs of the same locales.

2 0 7

FYI A native of Jamaica, Margaret Cezair-Thompson writes and teaches English at

Wellesley College near Boston. In the essay that follows, she alludes to “the violencein Jamaica in the ’70s,” a theme that pervades her widely acclaimed debut novel,The True History of Paradise (1999). According to the Sunday Business Post ofIreland, the novel “is based partly on her own experiences: the daughter of theJamaican security minister, Cezair-Thompson left her home country in her twenties tostudy in New York. While there, she heard on the radio that her father had been as-sassinated. It wasn’t actually him—‘it was one of his deputy ministers, but for 24hours I thought he had been killed.’” “Geography Lessons” appeared in theWashington Post Magazine in December 1999.

GeographyLessons

M a r g a r e t C e z a i r - T h o m p s o n(1999)

Aunt Justine was nobody’s favorite aunt. She had a quick temper and aharsh voice. Her husband, Uncle Nev, took her bad moods in stride, but

her daughter used to come to our house to get away from her. Strangelyenough, whenever my mother had to leave me somewhere for the day, Iwould ask to go to Aunt Justine’s.

Like most houses in Jamaica, hers had a large, cool tile veranda. Several tileswere broken and they formed little ridges and valleys; it was a terrain Iknew well. I would play on the veranda while Aunt Justine chain-smokedand worked at her easel, painting landscapes from memory. There were alot of books in her house. Uncle Nev was a geography teacher, so along with

Images from www.foodforthepoor.org

Now consider this portrait of the island presented on the web siteof Food for the Poor, a nonprofit agency dedicated to eliminatinghunger worldwide.

“Desperate and frustrated.” From www.foodforthepoor.org:“Jamaica’s economy has been in decline since 1974, when theenergy-deficient country was hit hard by a rise in fuel costs. Inaddition, a worldwide recession reduced foreign demand forJamaican products. Jamaica’s economy has also been hurt by itslimited agricultural base. . . . Housing has become another prob-lem for Jamaica’s urban poor. When people move to Kingston insearch of work, it’s often difficult for them to find jobs. Some be-come homeless, while others are forced to accept low-payingjobs. To afford food and other necessities, they move into aban-doned properties. Some become squatters, building shacks ofcardboard, wood, and rusted tin on land owned by others.”

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

2 0 8

my aunt’s mystery and romance novels, there were atlases and geographytextbooks, and these in particular enthralled me. Words like tundra ap-pealed to me, and I would imagine myself living in extreme climates, in anigloo or a nomad’s tent. When Uncle Nev was there, he quizzed me onthings like the largest river in the world. He would sit on the veranda inkhaki shorts and draw continents on a grapefruit. Then he would slice thegrapefruit in half and offer me a hemisphere.

Every Christmas the whole family gathered at Aunt Justine’s. What I re-member most is playing outside in the warm sun and hearing the grown-ups’ veranda talk and veranda laughter. There were three Christmas drinks:sorrel, made from the acidic red petals of a kind of hibiscus and spiced withginger; Aunt Justine’s famous egg punch, made with rum; and pimentodram, a chilled brandy made from pimento (allspice) berries. There were alot of us, so we ate buffet-style on the veranda: roast suckling pig, ham,“rice-an’-peas,” baked plantain, pureed boiled green bananas. Dessert wasJamaican Christmas pudding, a dark, moist fruitcake that had been soakingin rum and brandy for months.

When air conditioners first came to the island, Uncle Leo, whose company in-stalled them in the big hotels, conspired with Uncle Nev to air-conditionAunt Justine’s living room in time for Christmas. It was to be a surprise.Everybody except Aunt Justine knew and had an opinion: Some looked for-ward to the novelty of a cool Christmas, others said they didn’t want to spendChristmas shut up inside the house shivering. Uncle Nev reasoned: “Thosewho want a white Christmas can sit in the living room, and those who want ared Christmas can sit on the veranda.” By “red Christmas” he meant the poin-settias that grew in people’s gardens and turned blood-red in December.

Christmas Day was burning hot, but I put on my sweater even before Ireached Aunt Justine’s. My sister asked if it was going to snow. I said no, butit would be cold, like real Christmas. In those days, Jamaican children wereeducated as though they lived in England. At school we painted snowmenand holly on our Christmas cards. The cards, the carols and CharlesDickens all gave me the impression that Christmas in Jamaica was counter-feit. As for our “red Christmas,” though I looked forward to the changingpoinsettia leaves, I thought it a paltry substitute for winter.

When we got to Aunt Justine’s, the doors were wide open and Uncle Nev wason the veranda in his shorts.

“Wha’ ’appen, Nev? No air conditioner?”

“Man, Justine say’ no food goin’ cook today if we bring cold weather into herhouse.”

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

P L A C E S W E G O

I went back for Christmas 1997. I had lived most of my adult life in theUnited States, and the violence in Jamaica in the ’70s had alienated me. As Iwas driving from the airport, familiar sights reassured me: the noisy com-merce of cart men, roadside higglers and crowded buses. The islandseemed more lush and beautiful than ever; the violence of men had not de-nuded the landscape.

My parents and siblings were abroad. There was no family home to returnto. I went to Aunt Justine’s house even though I knew it had been sold. Noone had prepared me for the hotel parking lot that had replaced it. It hadbeen the most stable feature of my childhood.

Uncle Nev had died, and Aunt Justine lived in a tiny apartment without evena balcony. She had given most of her furniture and books to her daughter,Phyllis, but the walls were crowded with her unframed landscapes. Arthriticfingers now prevented her from painting, and she was almost blind. Shespent her days “listening” to the TV, mostly American talk shows.

Phyllis continued her mother’s Christmas Day tradition. Her veranda, likemost in Kingston, had been enclosed, barricaded in iron grillwork. We satin the living room, about a dozen of us. The country relatives no longercame to Kingston because of carjackings. There was no egg punch or pi-mento dram, but my cousin made sorrel spiked with rum. Her teenage sonssat in the TV room watching American football, and that seemed a sacrilege;soccer is football. Looking around, I thought we could have been a group ofJamaicans celebrating a Christmas anywhere.

2 1 1

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

2 1 0 P L A C E S W E G O

There had been a number of particularly gruesome killings, and everyonewas agreeing that the “dons,” drug lords, were now running the country.Someone said, “Is de politicians’ fault, man, dem sell off de country.”

Things had not gotten much better; I wished I had not come “home.” I gotup and wandered around the house like a ghost looking for old thingsamong the new.

I found what I was looking for, its cover worn but intact: World Geography forPrimary Schools, Vol. I. I asked Phyllis if I could have it. She said yes, it hadoutlived its usefulness; geography was now an optional subject in theschools. I realized that this was true not only in Jamaica but most places.Like Latin, the language of geography was dead. Words that had captivatedme as a child—steppe, antipodes—seemed anachronistic, at best poetic. UncleNev and his lessons, Aunt Justine’s house, the changes in Jamaica, and inmyself. I went out to the veranda carrying the book as if it alone containedmy many-sided grief.

Aunt Justine was by herself out there, smoking. Before I had the chance tosit and talk with her, other guests began trickling out, bringing rum andtheir animated discussion of politics and crime. Phyllis brought outdessert. There was praise for the pudding, and then there was talk aboutwhether Jamaica was becoming a less religious country.

“No, man, Jamaicans still love to go to church.”

“Which church? Ganja church?”

Everyone laughed, then someone told a preacher joke, then someone elsetold another. The jokes became more raunchy, the laughter more raucous.

They were not mourners, but revelers. The book on my lap made me feel likea moody schoolgirl. My cousin had specially prepared some of my favoriteJamaican foods. And there was Aunt Justine, arthritic, blind and all! On thestereo Nat King Cole was singing, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire . . .”and through the grillwork I could see my cousin’s garden full of red poinset-tias. I was 18 degrees north of the equator, and it was really Christmas.

SHOWING AND TELL ING IN DESCRIPT IVE WRIT ING

No matter what you write, it will be more appealing to your audience if you include spe-cific details rather than page after page of generalities. This is especially true when youwrite about places: When you take readers to a specific locale, you become their guide.They can see, hear, taste, smell, and feel only what you set before them. And if you omitthese kinds of details, their trip to the place will be flat and less than memorable.

If you haven’t already, you’ll probably soon hear a teacher talk about the difference, inwriting, between showing and telling. The most common scenario goes something likethis: Telling—simply writing about something (“it was 95 degrees in the shade”)—is notas effective as showing—letting readers share an experience with you (“I felt my skinmelting as I stood in the afternoon heat”). Telling isn’t always a bad technique, however.Often, for reasons of pacing, priority, and space, telling works well—readers can’t experi-ence everything. Consider this example from Margaret Cezair-Thompson’s essay“Geography Lessons” (pages XXX–XXX):

I went back for Christmas 1997. I had lived most of my adult life in the UnitedStates, and the violence in Jamaica in the ’70s had alienated me. As I was dri-ving from the airport, familiar sights reassured me: the noisy commerce of cartmen, roadside higglers and crowded buses. The island seemed more lush andbeautiful than ever; the violence of men had not denuded the landscape.

Although her trip from the airport is important, it isn’t the central point of her essay, soCezair-Thompson tells readers what she wants them to know in a few sentences. Showingall of this might have taken a few pages. Notice, however, that even in her telling, Cezair-Thompson appeals to readers’ senses by using such words as noisy and lush.

And that’s the point: The best descriptive writing combines showing and telling, usingstrong verbs, evocative adjectives and adverbs (in small doses), and lots of sensory details.

As you undertake your writing assignments, keep the following in mind to bring peopleand places to life:

■ Think about the details. If you’re writing about a place, list the critical details thatmake that place what it is, that set it off from other places.

■ Group your list by sense (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch). How many of the detailsare visual? Probably most of them, since we rely most heavily on what we can seewhen describing places. Try to think of details that appeal to the other senses aswell.

■ Decide which of these details you want to show and which you want to tell. Thesechoices will depend on your purpose the amount of space you have, and in somecases your audience.

■ Incorporate details into your draft.

TIP

wr

itin

g

▼

Explore “Geography Lessons” in depth


212 P L A C E S W E G O 213

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

My Island

B u r n i n g S p e a r(1997)

You live on my islandAnd you own all my rightsI want you to knowGive me what is mineYou live on my islandAnd you own all my rightsI want you to knowGive me what is mine

Is this another Christopher ColumbusIs this another old pirate gameIs this another Christopher ColumbusIs this another old pirate game

If this is a war, a musical warI want you to know, I decided to fightCome in my soldiersCome and let us fightCome and let us fightFight for our rightCome in my soldiersCome and let us fightCome and let us fightFight for our rightI and I yading in the footstep, the footstep of the Kings HighwayI and I yading in the footstep, the footstep of the Kings HighwayI want you to knowGive me what is mine

You live on my islandAnd you own all my rightsI want you to knowGive me what is mine

So you think you come again to trick usSo you think you come again to fool us So you think you come again to trick us

“The real, 100 percent positivechanges is gonna take time, inany country, or any island. But Ithink we’re moving along in theright direction. It might be slow,but we’re still getting there.”

— BURNING SPEAR

Damien Marley performing at the Roots,Rock, Reggae Tour in Vienna, Virginia

The Pulse of JamaicaReggae is just one of many kinds of folk music popular in Jamaica, but it iscertainly the best known in the rest of the world. Like blues in the southernUnited States, reggae has its roots in Africa and was developed and popular-ized by black artists. The appeal of reggae, however, crosses racial, national,and class lines.

Although reggae’s popularity is in large part based in its pulsating, infectiousrhythms, the lyrics, too, have a broad appeal. Reggae songs—whether aboutlove and peace, violence and suffering, anger and rebellion, or spiritual upliftand overcoming—are often songs rooted in Jamaica itself and thus present astrong sense of place. Consider, for example, the lyrics to “My Island,” byBurning Spear.

2 1 5

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

C O N S I D E R

1. Notice the structure of Cezair-Thompson’s essay. Why do you think she uses Christmas asa focal point for her remembrances? How does this choice affect the portrait she cre-ates, in your opinion?

2. Compare the language used in “Geography Lesson” and “My Island.” Notice the momentswhen the authors incorporate vocabulary and phrases from Jamaican dialect—such as “Iand I,” “Jah,” “yading” and “ganja”—into their work. How do these words and phrases af-fect your response to the texts? How do they affect your impression of Jamaica? Howmight the portraits be different if they had been written solely in academic English oronly in dialect?

3. Based on their words, what do you think Cezair-Thompson and Burning Spear would sayabout the Web site depictions that open the discussion of Jamaica? Which, if any, do youthink they would see as the most “complete” or “accurate”? Point to specific passages inthe essays and the song lyrics to support your opinion.

C O M P O S E

4. Each element discussed here—the Web sites, the essays, and the song lyrics—has a pur-pose. Write a paragraph or two in which you describe what you see as the purpose ofeach and assess whether the words and images are effective in that context.

5. Conduct research in the library or on the Internet to learn something about the history,cultures, and politics of Jamaica. Write a few paragraphs reporting your findings; thencomment on whether and how this information changes your response to the images andreadings in this chapter.

C H A L L E N G E

6. Reexamine the materials in this section. Given all the facets of Jamaica you’ve seen, canyou imagine any possible consequences for a place where extreme affluence and povertyexist so close?

7. Where in your state—or in another state or country you’ve visited—might these kinds ofextremes be found in the same proximity? Using that more familiar location from whichto draw your examples, write a paper in which you explore the ways affluence and povertyintersect and what may follow, politically and socially, from such contact.

2 1 4 P L A C E S W E G O

So you think you come again to fool us Long, long, long, long, long time agoMy old great grandfather father, usually work in this plantationLong, long, long, long, long time agoMy old great grandfather father, usually work in this plantationWater carrier / Food server

So you think you come again to trick usSo you think you come again to fool us So you think you come again to trick usSo you think you come again to fool us

You live on my islandAnd you own all my rightsI want you to knowGive me what is mineIf this is a war, a musical warI want you to know, I decided to fightCome in my soldiersCome and let us fightCome and let us fightFight for our rightI and I yading in the footstep, the footstep of the Kings HighwayI and I yading in the footstep, the footstep of the Kings Highway

You live on my islandAnd you own all my rightsI want you to knowGive me what is mineYou live on my islandAnd you own all my rightsI want you to knowGive me what is mineRemember you live on my island

Learn more about Burning Spear and Reggae music.


2 1 7

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

We often use stories to make sense of the world, and we use them toremember. Many of the stories we tell, in fact, are born of nostal-gia: Because we miss something (or someone), we talk about it and

tell a story to try to bring some part of it back, if for only a moment.

These nostalgic stories—and the ways they are told—vary as much as thetellers themselves. But what many have in common is a strong sense of place(the root of nostalgia is the Greek nostos, “return home”). In a recent onlinediscussion thread, under the title “Disappearing Places” (www.photo.net/)photographer Marc Williams laments the passing of many of the places thatmade his childhood neighborhood unique. He concludes by asking, “Do youhave something that you could post here on this subject? No critiques please,but a few remembrances, or even current things on the endangered list.”

This section begins with Williams’s initial Internet posting and some re-sponses, as well as an essay in which another writer mourns the loss of a spe-cial childhood place. It concludes with two views of a legendary U.S. road-way, Route 66, which has faded in the years since the development of theinterstate highway system.

Williams writes:

I just discovered [an] Allied Moving box with hundreds of neg[atives]s thathad been missing for years. In it was part of a project I had undertaken torecord the things of my life that were disappearing (ironic, that the negs dis-appeared also).

In the neighborhood where I grew up, before mega-malls, multiplex grocerystores and “bedroom only” zoning laws, there were neighborhood candystores, barber shops, tiny markets, women’s salons and soda fountains.Often the owners lived up above the store. In some places, these still exist,but in many others they are fast disappearing. In their place are the ubiqui-tous Condo, Colonial and other assorted Characterless Crap.

It really promoted a sense of neighborhood. [In my opinion], it is a goodthing to chronicle the disappearing aspects of our lives. Like I wish I had apicture of all my brothers and sisters in our PJs on top of my father’sPontiac station wagon at the now rare Drive-in Theater.

Places We Miss

216 P L A C E S W E M I S S

In his posting on the same Internet site, Ralph Barker writes that “small towns inthe Southwest . . . boomed during the heyday of the fabled Route 66 in the1950s—a time when family auto touring and ‘road trips’ were ‘the’ vacation. Thebright paint that once attracted customers has long since faded, and now justpeels.” Morgan Foehl, in response, writes, “Ralph’s shot reminded me of this im-age of another Route 66 casualty I snapped in New Mexico. It makes me wishthere were still a way to drive across the U.S. and be able to pull right off thehighway into little places like this owned by locals. Here’s to the Interstates . . .”

Neighborhood Café, Cleveland

Morgan Foehl, Route 66, New Mexico (2002)

2 1 8 P L A C E S W E M I S S

C O N S I D E R

1. Can a single image capture the essence of a place? Can a hundred images? A thou-sand? Explain your answer.

2. What is the effect of leaving people out of the photographs on pages 59 and 60? How isthe decision to focus solely on the place tied to the photographers’ purpose? Can you thinkof contexts in which a photographer might effectively include people to tell the story of a“disappearing place”?

C O M P O S E

3. Over the past several years, numerous “urban exploration” sites have sprung up on theInternet. As a group called Infiltration (www.infiltration.org) puts it, these sites are about“going places you’re not supposed to go”—abandoned malls, shopping centers, factories,mills, even disaster sites. Visit one of these sites, and analyze the portraits of the vanish-ing places that are presented. For example, you might think about what it is that “urbanexplorers” see in these places that is worthy of their attention and documentation.

2 1 9

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

Ralph Barker, untitled (2002)

J e n n y A t t i y e h(2001)

GRAFTON, Utah—My grandfather liked to dare me to walk to the ceme-tery at night, up the mud road from our house, past the orchards, the

looming cows, past the tumbledown barn into the open, empty fields. Fromthere I could almost see the mounds rising against the bluff. Grampa urgedme on. Early settlers were buried here in unmarked graves, and nearby laythe headstone of a young boy, killed by Indians. As I turned and headedrapidly for home, I could hear Grampa chuckling in the dark.

It was Grampa who had brought us to Grafton, this ghost town on the edgeof Zion National Park. He was born and raised in Utah, and wanted us totake part, to learn to love it as he did. So we camped out in an old adobebrick house, without running water or electricity, on a few acres of land myparents had bought. I was a little girl in diapers when we first came here forlong holidays, driving from Los Angeles in a tattered VW Bug. The town—ahandful of abandoned buildings, apple trees, lizards and the Virgin River,carving too close to the bank—became mine.

Happiness for me was waking up from a nap to eat watermelon by the irri-gation ditch that ran in front of our house. At least that’s how it seems whenI look at the photograph—my eyes are still sleepy, my white shirt amakeshift napkin, fingerprinted with a mixture of juice and red Utah dust.At night we slept on cots, with an applewood fire spitting out cinders ontoour canvas sleeping bags. In the mornings, frost lined the windows, and itwas so cold I was afraid to get out of bed.

But that was 30 years ago. Today, Grafton as I knew it is dying. There are no win-dows left in the old brick house, and the walls are scarred with graffiti. On themantelpiece it reads, “Albert Loves Rhonda for Eternity and Mike.” Deep cracksin the walls have encouraged passers-by to help themselves to the fired bricks.And down by the river, another empty house gapes, its front porch torn off byvandals. With its supports removed, the second story wall collapsed soon after,exposing adobe bricks to the melting rain.

We’d heard the rumors, of course. Grafton was falling apart, but we were faraway. Now, we’ve finally come back to see what’s left of our land.

My Ghost Town:A Vanishing Personal History


I had no idea it was so beautiful. As a child, I had taken the place forgranted—the still warmth of the afternoons, the slow brown river, the redsandstone cliffs poking into the sky. Down the road, I looked for the Indianchief my grandfather had drawn on the blackboard of the schoolhouse, buthe was long gone.

As I stood and watched, a dozen teenagers climbed into the open face of adeserted house nearby, up the broken staircase to the second floor. Theywere laughing and shoving each other—giggling at the poetry sprayed onthe plaster walls. I felt like a tight-faced schoolmarm, injured and entitled,and I told them to get down. “Can’t you guys read the sign?” They did notanswer, and moved off.

It became clear to me that I really didn’t want to share this town with any-one—I just wanted to be left alone, to piece together the past. But myclaims on Grafton were as nothing compared to those who came beforeme. Built by Mormons in 1859, the settlement was doomed from the start.Frequent flooding of the Virgin River washed away the crops and de-stroyed irrigation ditches, making life close to impossible. At one point,the entire town was relocated upstream, but to no avail. By the 1930s,Grafton had turned into a ghost town, gathering beer bottles and tumble-weeds.

I realize now that I, too, have abandoned Grafton—to the trash, the vandals,the deterioration. Perhaps I can make amends. Sheepishly, I begin to cleanup. My father and I pick up loose boards from a collapsed shed and putthem in a pile. A rusty nail grazes my palm. We make slow progress, but asthe debris grows higher, I feel vaguely comforted.

Soon, the town will be busy with the sounds of restoration. In the past fewyears, a group of local townspeople and grassroots environmentalists hasbanded together to preserve what’s left of Grafton. They plan to stabilize theold buildings and keep a close watch on the place to cut down on vandal-ism. There’s already a shiny red gate blocking access to the adobe church,and a spanking-new sign explaining what is to come.

Grafton is soon to become a place of public purpose. But when I considerthe pamphlets to be distributed at the information booth, I am sick at thethought—for Grafton is no longer mine. It has been appropriated.

For my part, I like Grafton best the way it used to be, but it is too late forthat now. Already, too many tourists, drawn by the guidebooks, come togawk at the town, leaving behind their lunch wrappers. I want the Graftonof my childhood, serene and apart. A place where I could commune with

2 2 1

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

Scows and watch the stinging red ants build their hills in the dirt. I wouldhave liked my own daughter to play here someday, lost in daydreams.

It is almost dusk now, and the crickets buzz softly in the grass. As I stretchout on the front porch, I hear my parents’ voices inside, low and reassuring.The red mountains fade to brown in the dying light. Gawkers pass by, mak-ing tracks in the dirt road. They call out, “No Trespassing!” and drive on by.

“We own the place,” I tell them. But they probably don’t believe me. And, insome way, it really isn’t true. Slowly the dust resettles, and the crickets startup again. Slightly panicked, I look around at my old haunts. I’d like the sunto set quietly on Grafton, and its ghosts. At the cemetery up the road, thereis no more room.

C O N S I D E R

1. Reread “My Ghost Town: A Vanishing Personal History,” paying special attention to thespecific details Attiyeh uses to describe Grafton. Which details are most effective in help-ing you “see” the town? Which particular words and phrases do you find most powerful?

2. Why do you think Attiyeh is annoyed when she encounters teenagers exploring the oldschoolhouse? How, in her opinion, is their interest in Grafton different from hers? Do youagree that there’s a difference? Why or why not?

C O M P O S E

3. Make a list of ten places that are or have been important in your life. Then list the events,experiences, and emotions you associate with each place. Have any of these “disap-peared” from your life? If so, how? If not, why not?

C H A L L E N G E

4. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling, one that shows up in nearly every aspect of our lives andinfluences fashion, art, architecture, film, and product design. More often than not, nostal-gia is considered harmless. But might this relentless yearning for times past create prob-lems for an individual or even a society? (For example, some Russians living now in afreer and less stable society long for the stability of the more repressive Communist era.)Study manifestations of nostalgia in a specific group or segment of society, and then writea serious paper evaluating the very human inclination to cherish things long gone.

5. Write an essay eulogizing a place from your childhood that no longer exists.

2 2 2 P L A C E S W E M I S S 2 2 3

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

The Grapes of Wrath

J o h n S t e i n b e c k(1939)

CHAPTER 12Highway 66 is the main migrant road. 66—the long concrete path acrossthe country, waving gently up and down on the map, from the Mississippito Bakersfield—over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into themountains, crossing the divide and down into the bright and terribledesert, and across the desert to the mountains again, and into the richCalifornia valleys.

66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land,from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert’sslow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out ofTexas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what lit-tle richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and theycome into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and therutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight.

Clarksville and Ozark and Van Buren and Fort Smith on 64, and there’s anend of Arkansas. And all the roads into Oklahoma City, 66 down from Tulsa,270 up from McAlester. 81 from Wichita Falls south, from Enid north.Edmond, McLoud, Purcell. 66 out of Oklahoma City; El Reno and Clinton,going west on 66. Hydro, Elk City, and Texola; and there’s an end toOklahoma. 66 across the Panhandle of Texas. Shamrock and McLean,Conway and Amarillo, the yellow. Wildorado and Vega and Boise, andthere’s an end of Texas. Tucumcari and Santa Rosa and into the New

Mexican mountains to Albuquerque, where the road comes down fromSanta Fe. Then down the gorged Rio Grande to Las Lunas and west again on66 to Gallup, and there’s the border of New Mexico.

And now the high mountains. Holbrook and Winslow and Flagstaff in thehigh mountains of Arizona. Then the great plateau rolling like a groundswell. Ashfork and Kingman and stone mountains again, where water mustbe hauled and sold. Then out of the broken sun-rotted mountains ofArizona to the Colorado, with green reeds on its banks, and that’s the end ofArizona. There’s California just over the river, and a pretty town to start it.Needles, on the river. But the river is a stranger in this place. Up fromNeedles and over a burned range, and there’s the desert. And 66 goes onover the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and the black centermountains hang unbearably in the distance. At last there’s Barstow, andmore desert until at last the mountains rise up again, the good mountains,and 66 winds through them. Then suddenly a pass, and below the beautifulvalley, below orchards and vineyards and little houses, and in the distance acity. And, oh, my God, it’s over.

The people in flight streamed out on 66, sometimes a single car, sometimesa little caravan. All day they rolled slowly along the road, and at night theystopped near water. In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns ofsteam, loose connecting rods hammered and pounded. And the men dri-ving the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehensively. How farbetween towns? It is a terror between towns. If something breaks—well, ifsomething breaks we camp right here while Jim walks to town and gets apart and walks back and—how much food we got?

Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and withyour hands on the steering wheel; listen with the palm of your hand on thegearshift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to thepounding old jalopy with all your senses, for a change of tone, a variation ofrhythm may mean—a week here? That rattle—that’s tappets. Don’t hurt abit. Tappets can rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But thatthudding as the car moves along—can’t hear that—just kind of feel it.Maybe oil isn’t gettin’ someplace. Maybe a bearin’s startin’ to go. Jesus, if it’sa bearing, what’ll we do? Money’s goin’ fast. And why’s the son-of-a-bitchheat up so hot today? This ain’t no climb. Le’s look. God Almighty, the fanbelt’s gone! Here, make a belt outa this little piece a rope. Le’s see howlong—there. I’ll splice the ends. Now take her slow—slow, till we can get toa town. That rope belt won’t last long.

’F we can on’y get to California where the oranges grow before this here ol’jug blows up. ’F we on’y can.

FYI John Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath in 1939, immortalizing the migration

west of thousands of Americans displaced by drought and poverty during the GreatDepression. The novel follows the Joad family as it joins the procession of desperatepeople fleeing the Dust Bowl along Route 66, at the time the main road west to LosAngeles. Steinbeck calls Route 66 America’s “mother road,” in part because it car-ried so many people from the desolation of the Dust Bowl states toward hope inCalifornia.

And the tires—two layers of fabric worn through. On’y a four-ply tire. Mightget a hundred miles more outa her if we don’t hit a rock an’ blow her.Which’ll we take—a hunderd, maybe, miles, or maybe spoil the tubes?Which? A hunderd miles. Well, that’s somepin you got to think about. We

got tube patches. Maybe when she goes she’ll onlyspring a leak. How about makin’ a boot? Might getfive hunderd more miles. Le’s go on till she blows.

We got to get a tire, but, Jesus, they want a lot for aol’ tire. They look a fella over. They know he got togo on. They know he can’t wait. And the price goesup.

Take it or leave it. I ain’t in business for my health.I’m here a-sellin’ tires. I ain’t givin’ ’em away. I can’thelp what happens to you. I got to think what hap-pens to me.

How far’s the nex’ town?

I seen forty-two cars a you fellas go by yesterday.Where you all come from? Where all of you goin’?

Well, California’s a big state.

It ain’t that big. The whole United States ain’t thatbig. It ain’t that big. It ain’t big enough. There ain’troom enough for you an’ me, for your kind an’ mykind, for rich and poor together all in one country,for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat.Whyn’t you go back where you come from?

This is a free country. Fella can go where he wants.

That’s what you think! Ever hear of the border patrol on the California line?Police from Los Angeles—stopped you bastards, turned you back. Says, ifyou can’t buy no real estate we don’t want you. Says, got a driver’s license’?Le’s see it. Tore it up. Says you can’t come in without no driver’s license.

It’s a free country.

Well, try to get some freedom to do. Fella says you’re jus’ as free as you gotjack to pay for it.

In California they got high wages. I got a han’bill here tells about it.

Baloney! I seen folks comin’ back. Somebody’s kiddin’ you. You want thattire or don’t ya’?

2 2 5

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S


Got to take it, but, Jesus, mister, it cuts into our money! We ain’t got muchleft.

Well, I ain’t no charity. Take her along.

Got to, I guess. Let’s look her over. Open her up, look a’ the casing—youson-of-a-bitch, you said the casing was good. She’s broke damn nearthrough.

The hell she is. Well—by George! How come I didn’ see that?

You did see it, you son-of-a-bitch. You wanta charge us four bucks for abusted casing. I’d like to take a sock at you.

Now keep your shirt on! I didn’ see it, I tell you. Here—tell ya what I’ll do.I’ll give ya this one for three-fifty.

You’ll take a flying jump at the moon! We’ll try to make the nex’ town.

Think we can make it on that tire? Got to. I’ll go on the rim before I’d givethat son-of-a-bitch a dime.

What do ya think a guy in business is? Like he says, he ain’t in it for hishealth. That’s what business is. What’d you think it was? Fella’s got—See thatsign ’longside the road there? Service Club. Luncheon Tuesday, ColmadoHotel? Welcome, brother. That’s a Service Club. Fella had a story. Went to oneof them meetings an’ told the story to all them business men. Says, when Iwas a kid my ol’ man give me a haltered heifer an’ says take her down an’ gither serviced. Ant the fella says, I done it, an’ ever’ time since then when I heara business man talkin’ about service, I wonder who’s gettin’ screwed. Fella inbusiness got to lie an cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That’s what’s impor-tant. You go steal that tire an’ you’re a thief, but he tried to steal your fourdollars for a busted tire. They call that sound business.

Danny in the back seat wants a cup a water. Have to wait. Got no water here.

Listen—that the rear end? Can’t tell.

Sound telegraphs through the frame. There goes a gasket. Got to go on.Listen to her whistle. Find a nice place to camp an’ I’ll jerk the head off. But,God Almighty, the food’s gettin’ low, the money’s gettin’ low. When we can’tbuy no more gas—what then?

Danny in the back seat wants a cup a water. Little fella’s thirsty.

Listen to that gasket whistle. Chee-rist! There she went. Blowed tube an’casing all to hell. Have to fix her. Save that casing to make boots; cut ’em outan’ stick ’em inside a weak place.

Poster for the 1940 film basedon The Grapes of Wrath,directed by John Ford

Route 66Cars pulled up beside the road, engine heads off, tires mended. Cars limp-ing along 66 like wounded things, panting and struggling. Too hot, looseconnections, loose bearings, rattling bodies.

Danny wants a cup a water.

People in flight along 66. And the concrete road shone like a mirror underthe sun, and in the distance the heat made it seem that there were pools ofwater in the road.

Danny wants a cup a water.

He’ll have to wait, poor little fella. He’s hot. Nex’ service station. Service sta-tion, like the fella says.

Two hundred and fifty thousand people over the road. Fifty thousand oldcars—wounded, steaming. Wrecks along the road, abandoned. Well, whathappened to them? What happened to the folks in that car? Did they walk?Where are they? Where does the courage come from? Where does the terri-ble faith come from?

And here’s a story you can hardly believe, but it’s true, and it’s funny and it’sbeautiful. There was a family of twelve and they were forced off the land.They had no car. They built a trailer out of junk and loaded it with their pos-sessions. They pulled it to the side of 66 and waited. And pretty soon a sedanpicked them up. Five of them rode in the sedan and seven on the trailer, anda dog on the trailer. They got to California in two jumps. The man whopulled them fed them. And that’s true. But how can such courage be, andsuch faith in their own species? Very few things would teach such faith.

The people in flight from the terror behind—strange things happen to them,some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

2 2 7

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S


B o b b y Tr o u p(1946)

Well if you ever plan to motor westJust take my way that’s the highway that’s the bestGet your kicks on Route 66

Well it winds from Chicago to L.A. More than 2000 miles all the wayGet your kicks on Route 66

Well goes from St. Louie down to Missouri Oklahoma City looks oh so prettyYou’ll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino

C O N S I D E R

1. What is the effect of Steinbeck’s use of so many place names in his description ofHighway 66 and the people traveling on it? Are you familiar with any of them? Does thismatter?

2. What do the lyrics of Troup’s 1946 song suggest had changed about Route 66 and thecountry since Steinbeck wrote in the 1930s?

C O M P O S E

3. Compose a piece about a road you routinely travel. It can be in the form of a short paper,a song lyric, or a photo essay.

C H A L L E N G E

4. Nearly seventy years after the Dust Bowl migration, thousands of people desperate for anew life are still trying to get to California, though they are traveling north. Using your li-brary or the Internet, research the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico and the condi-tions they endure to try to enter America. How are these people different from those whotraveled Route 66 to California in the 1930s? How are they the same?

Would you get hip to this kindly tip And go take that California trip Get your kicks on Route 66

Well goes from St. Louie down to Missouri Oklahoma city looks oh so prettyYou’ll see Amarillo and Gallup, New Mexico Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino

Would you get hip to this kindly tip And go take that California trip Get your kicks on Route 66

Explore the history and lore ofRoute 66.


FYI Highway 66, which started in Chicago and snaked through eight states—Illinois,

Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California—gained newfame in Bobby Troup’s upbeat song “Route 66,” which quickly became a popularstandard and was an early rock ’n’ roll anthem. Route 66 was replaced as the maineast-west traffic artery during the development of the interstate highway system inthe 1950s and ’60s. When these great highways came into being, many small townsthat had thrived on the business provided by Route 66 began to disappear. Soon,the road itself seemed to fade.

P ro j ec t 1

Analyzing a Representation of a Place

The images of Jamaica you’ve encountered in this chapter illustrate thatdescribing a place, whether in words or in images, is always a rhetoricalprocess: What a writer or artist “sees” in a place reflects his or her partic-

ular context and point of view. For this project, find a textual or visual represen-tation of a place you know well, and then compose a three- to five-page essayanalyzing this representation. Think about the kind of portrait the text or imagecreates; how it uses words, images, or design elements to convey an impression;and how well it reflects your own sense of what the place is like. For example,you might compare a brochure advertising dormitories at your campus to yourown experience living there or evaluate a Web site advertising the restaurantwhere you waited tables last summer. Or perhaps you recently visited the citywhere your favorite television show is set. Whatever place you choose, your taskis to examine the representation in light of your own experience there.

Before you begin, take a look at “‘Still More Monkeys than People’: CostaVerde’s Rhetorical Paradise” on page 73 to see how student writer Beth Murffapproached this task. Consider also the questions for composition first pre-sented in Chapter 2, which can help you choose a topic and develop yourdraft:

W H A T ’ S I T T O Y O U ?

■ Choose as your subject a place that you have strong feelings about, eitherpositive or negative. If you don’t care about a place, you probably won’tbe sufficiently motivated to sift through various representations of thatlocale to produce an interesting rhetorical analysis.

Assignments and Projects

2 2 8 A S S I G N M E N T S A N D P R O J E C T S

W H A T D O Y O U W A N T T O S A Y A B O U T I T ?

■ The purpose of your essay will be to help readers understand the repre-sentation of a place. You’ll need to critically examine the depiction(s)you’ve selected and bring your own experiences into the discussion to ex-plore the rhetorical dimensions of the representation.

W H O W I L L L I S T E N ?

■ Readers will find your analysis most engaging if they learn somethingnew or unexpected from it. Look for a text that reveals an unusual pointof view or that conflicts in interesting ways with your own experiencesand might generate a response from your readers. An essay explainingthat “this postcard view of the Springlake Amusement Park is completelyaccurate” doesn’t give your audience much to think about. But an analy-sis that helps readers think about the role of amusement parks in contem-porary culture will have a broader appeal.

W H A T D O Y O U N E E D T O K N O W ?

■ Once you’ve chosen the text or image you’ll analyze, look closely to de-termine what qualities of the place it emphasizes. Begin by identifying thequalities of the representation that will become part of the content ofyour essay: What objects or structures are foregrounded in the text or im-age? What is de-emphasized or left out? What point of view does the textor image invite you to adopt? If people are part of the text or image, whoare they and what are they doing? What emotional associations does thetext or image evoke?

As you begin to identify patterns in the text or image, look for specific ex-amples—key words, phrases, images, design elements, or other items—thatillustrate those patterns.

Finally, you’ll need to inventory your personal experiences and memories.Start by freewriting your own description of the place—writing nonstopfor five minutes or so on your subject to generate ideas. Then compareyour description, point by point, to the patterns you see in the text or im-age you’ve analyzed.

H O W W I L L Y O U D O I T ?

■ When you think about the purpose of your project, keep in mind that arhetorical analysis of any text—whether it’s visual, print, or multimedia—hastwo main components: First you describe what the text does; then you ex-plain how it does it. Suppose you’re analyzing an informational bookletabout the retirement facility where your grandparents live. You will need todescribe for your readers the booklet’s depiction of the facility (“The bookletemphasizes the homelike atmosphere of Forest Hills Village”); then you willneed to show how the booklet creates this depiction, pointing to specificwords, phrases, or images (“The photos of individual rooms and apartments

2 2 9

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

2 3 1

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S


feature upholstered couches, bookcases, and other typical home furnishings.Although hospital beds, wheelchairs, and other medical equipment are partof the services offered, these institutional items are never pictured.”)

Once you’ve developed your description and analysis, decide how thismaterial will fit into a larger structure or arrangement. Since the assign-ment for your project asks you to analyze and compare, consider a com-parison-and-contrast pattern (see the Writing Tip on page 81).

Because this is an essay assignment, your primary medium will be words.However, if you’re analyzing a visual representation of a place, you maydecide to include that image or portions of the image to support youranalysis, as Beth Murff does in “Still More Monkeys than People.”Remember to discuss, cite, and document appropriately any outside textor images that appear in your paper.

H O W W E L L D O E S I T W O R K ?

■ Even skilled writers often make revisions to an analytical essay after doinga first draft. Review your draft carefully, and if possible, have a classmateor friend review it and offer feedback. Don’t hesitate to return to the textor image you’re analyzing to check your arguments or to find additional

supporting examples. Before you turn in the paper, proofreadthe text and check the formatting.

Beth Murff

Professor Gordon

Composition 103

29 May 2004

“Still More Monkeys than People”:

Costa Verde’s Rhetorical Paradise

You’re going to Costa Rica. What do you want to see while you’re

there? White sand beaches. The ocean. Palm trees. You want to lounge by

the pool with a refreshing drink in hand. You want to see the sights--you

know, all that rain forest stuff. The first thing is to find a place to stay.

You surf onto the Web site for the Costa Verde Hotel. “Still More Monkeys

than People,” it says. Monkeys? There are monkeys in Costa Rica! You

definitely must see the monkeys. You scroll down to a panoramic ocean

view above jungle treetops from a swimming pool sundeck. . . . How do

you make reservations?

The Costa Verde is just one of an increasing number of resorts cater-

ing to eco-tourists. In this paper, I investigate how the alluring advertise-

ment of this hotel appears to the viewer and how it differs from the reality

of the tourists’ experience, drawing on materials from the hotel’s Web site

and experiences from my own one-week stay at the hotel. Do luxury and

sensitivity to the local environment really go hand in hand?

It is important to understand why Costa Rica is such an optimal

eco-tourist destination. Although the country is made up of only 19,730

square miles and represents a mere 0.03 percent of the landmass of the

Murff 1

S T U D E N T P R O J E C TBeth Murff , “Sti l l More Monkeys than People”

COMPARING AND CONTRAST ING

Throughout college and your professional career, you’ll likely be asked to make compar-isons between two (or more) items and to compose a report, evaluation, or analysis. Here’sone effective way to structure a comparison-and-contrast analysis, based on the assignmentin Project 1. This model can be adapted for other types of projects as well.

1. Introduce readers to the place and to the image you’ll analyze; provide a purpose state-ment or thesis forecasting your major points)

2. Describe of the representation you’re examining (What does it say about the place?)3. Analyze of the representation you’re examining (How does it create that impression?),

with supporting examples4. Compare ways in which the representation is similar to your own experience in the place5. Contrast ways in which the representation differs from your experiences in the place6. Summarize your key points and help readers to see their significance.

Of course, this model is only one possibility—arrange your essay to best suit the points youwant to make, and consult your instructor or a writing handbook for additional options.

TIP

wr

itin

g

▼

Tutorial. Using images in documents.


2 3 3

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

232 A S S I G N M E N T S A N D P R O J E C T S

earth, it is considered “one of the most biologically diverse countries of

the world.” In fact, about 4 percent of the world’s flora and fauna can be

found in Costa Rica. Twenty-five percent of the country is protected by

national parks, and there are over one hundred private reserves (Dunlop

83). This richness of wildlife lured over one million visitors in 1999 alone,

to “visit the birthplace of the term eco-tourism,” according to the Costa

Rican Tourism Institute (Dunlop 10).

Costa Rica also has its share of environmental problems. Forest

cover has decreased from 70 percent to only 23 percent since the 1950s.

Even national parks are not free from the dangers of deforestation, be-

cause 20 percent of nationally protected areas are still privately owned.

The Costa Verde Hotel, in fact, is one of the owners of the Manuel Antonio

National Park, in which it is located. Manuel Antonio Park covers 1,687

acres of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, a humid tropical forest zone

known for its wildlife and beaches--especially the Central American

squirrel monkey, or mono titi (Dunlop 102). Since the monkeys “do not

recognize [the] man-made boundaries of the park, they roam freely

through the forest, into areas developed for tourism, even onto hotel

grounds” (Sheck 168). The Costa Verde is one such hotel whose grounds

are traversed daily and nightly by troops of monkeys and other animals.

The small hotel is American-owned but locally run, and tourists travel

here mostly during Costa Rica’s dry season, from December to April.

The first thing one sees on the Costa Verde Web site is the hotel’s

logo and slogan. The logo is in big green letters, with squirrel monkeys

perched on various letters. Underneath it is the slogan “Still More

Monkeys than People.” There is a site map directly to the left, and

Murff 2

beneath it is a panoramic view of the ocean, seen over lush green tree-

tops from a deck beside a blue swimming pool. A brief description of the

hotel’s amenities is just to the left of an indoor shot of one of the hotel’s

rooms. Below this are more pool shots and an aerial view pointing to a

dense forest, indicating where the hotel is apparently located. Subpages

include “Rates,” “Rooms,” “Houses/Bungalows,” “Testimonials,” “Our

Monkeys,” “National Park,” “Map,” “Q&A,” “Weddings,” “Restaurants,”

“Attractions,” and “Photo Gallery.”

Murff 3

All of these pages feature several photographs of beaches, pools,

and hotel rooms; there are also recurring mentions of monkeys and other

wildlife. But there is little actual wildlife pictured other than plants. Only

the “Our Monkeys” subpage has several copyrighted photos of squirrel

monkeys and an accompanying article from Smithsonian magazine. The

remainder of the photos on the site consists mainly of deserted beaches

and amiable-looking people in bars and restaurants.

The key words used in the Costa Verde Web site are monkeys, view,

and observe. The absence of animals in the photos is a recurring visual

element. All of these patterns are significant in terms of frequency. Words

frequently used in conjunction with monkeys are foliage, trees, and birds.

These words suggest that the author of the site views monkeys very much as

part of the local environment. The frequent use of the word monkeys creates

an expectation that there will be many monkeys readily visible but presents

them as something to be viewed from a distance, as one might view a tree.

The focus on the view is seen even more in the frequent uses of the

word observe, which is used repeatedly to describe what the visitor will

2 3 5

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S


do at Costa Verde, such as observing monkeys, iguanas, sloths, birds,

dolphins, animals, plants, and stones. In the case of the park, the visitor

is invited to “observe” rather than remove anything from the grounds.

The visitor will be able to sit back and observe nature from a comfortable

distance.

Most of the monkeys and sloths that do appear on the Web site are

cartoon images rather than actual photos. Perhaps a reason for this is to

maintain the professional and civilized demeanor of the hotel. Tourists value

comfort, convenience, and luxury, and these are the aspects of the hotel

that the Web site portrays.

In summary, the reader is led to believe that a vacation at the Costa

Verde Hotel will be full of exotic natural beauty--observed as the “good

view” from the window and balcony. The visitor will be able to “see the

sights,” to experience the wilderness right from his or her air-conditioned

hotel room, and feel warm and fuzzy for appreciating nature.

This, however, is not what the visitor experiences at the Costa

Verde. The first room we were given had no view at all of the jungle or

the ocean. We decided to accept it until we were awakened the next day

by children’s squeals heard through the wall. After complaining, we

moved to a different building closer to the beach. The view was spectacu-

lar. The staff at the hotel was friendly—yet there was something unpro-

fessional about the place.

The free-roaming monkeys, sloths, and iguanas also gave Costa

Verde a much more wild feeling than we expected from the Web site.

Walking down a road or sidewalk, I would frequently encounter an iguana

in my path. Sitting on my balcony in the evening, I would be startled as a

monkey jumped off the roof into the tree not ten feet away. Chatting, we

would find a sloth hanging in a shrub behind the pool bar. I did not just

“observe” wildlife at Costa Verde—I encountered it at every turn. These

experiences did not take place on organized tours and outings; they took

place at unpredictable moments.

The culture of Manuel Antonio was also inseparable from the vacation

experience. The beach was public, and because of this interaction, the na-

Murff 4 Murff 5

Works Cited

Costa Verde Hotel Web site. May 20, 2004 <http://www.hotelcostaverde.

com/index.htm>.

Dunlop, Fiona. Fodor’s Exploring Costa Rica. New York: Fodor’s Travel

Publications, 2001.

Sheck, Ree Strange. Costa Rica: A Natural Destination. Santa Fe: John

Muir Publications, 1990.

Murff 6

tive residents are very present to the visitors. The pristine view of the rain

forest is not lessened by the presence of locals, but rather it is the pres-

ence of tourists that intrudes on the local culture and ecosystem. For ex-

ample, one of the biggest dangers to the animals is the power lines that

run the length of the tourist beach strip. Electrocution is a common cause

of death among the monkeys (“Our Monkeys”).

Is eco-tourism really as eco-friendly as the tourism industry would

have you believe? Is the average tourist aware that there may be environ-

mental implications to his or her visit? We have observed how the Costa

Verde uses rhetoric on its Web site to convey a certain idea of the place to

the viewer. Visitors who have viewed this page may come to Costa Verde

with the idea that they will simply be observing nature from a comfortable

distance, not interacting with it and thus not disrupting or harming it. They

may assume that tourist luxuries and unspoiled wilderness can exist in the

same space, without one affecting the other. However, the reality is that

man and nature are not separate entities—we must learn to coexist not

only in our own backyards and cities but also all over the world.

2 3 6 2 3 7A S S I G N M E N T S A N D P R O J E C T S

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

P ro j ec t 2

Field Observation and Analysis of a Public Space

Many of the writers and artists featured in this chapter are fascinatedwith documenting how the physical characteristics of places influ-ence (and are influenced by) the people who inhabit them. For this

project, you’ll engage in a similar process of observation. You’ll visit a publicplace, then write a three- to five-page paper that carefully describes and ana-lyzes it in order to identify the connections among the physical space, the peo-ple in it, and the activities that go on there. The questions for composing canhelp you begin developing ideas, collecting material, and writing your draft:

W H A T ’ S I T T O Y O U ?

■ Begin by selecting your subject—the place you’ll visit and describe. Yoursite can be a building; a small cluster of related buildings, like a strip mall;a portion of a building, such as the lobby of your apartment complex; oran open area such as a park, graffiti wall, or cemetery. Whatever your fo-cus, keep the following points in mind:

Choose a space that interests you and that’s not too familiar. If you knowa place well, it can be difficult to achieve the critical distance that you’llneed to observe it with an analytical eye.

Check the accessibility of your site. Is it nearby and open to the public? Astate prison, hard-hat construction site, or a monastery, no matter how in-triguing, probably won’t allow easy access, for example.

Reflect on ethical considerations. Will the presence of an observer alarm orembarrass people using the space? A lone male observer sitting in a parkinggarage after dark would almost certainly startle women en route to theircars. Also avoid sites where you’re likely to intrude on private conversationsor activities—as you might in the locker room at a fitness center.

W H A T D O Y O U W A N T T O S A Y A B O U T I T ?

■ While it’s important that you provide detailed, descriptions of the placeyou’ve selected, details alone aren’t enough. A key part of your purpose isto analyze what these details say about the relationship between the phys-ical features of the space and the people and activities you observe there.You’ll need to look for interesting patterns and connections in the infor-mation you’ve collected and use these to focus your discussion:

What catches your eye? Does this space look similar to or different fromplaces that serve similar functions?

Who is here? What are they wearing, doing, and saying? Do they appearcomfortable, excited, impatient, tired? Who is not here, and why? Is thespace designed to interest particular groups?

How do people use this space? Where do they sit, stand, or gather? Whatis a “normal” activity here? How can you tell?

How do people interact in this space? Who talks to whom? Who seems tobe in charge? How can you tell?

Do you see anything that surprises you? Does anyone use the space in anunexpected way?

W H O W I L L L I S T E N ?

■ It’s likely that the audience for your paper won’t have visited your site, soyou’ll need to describe it thoroughly and vividly (see the Writing Tip onpage 53) and to provide specific examples to illustrate the patterns you see.Strive to engage your readers by bringing the sights, sounds, and activitiesof the place to life, and then by helping your audience see the significanceof these details.

W H A T D O Y O U N E E D T O K N O W ?

■ Although you’ll gather most of the content for this project through directobservation, you may first need to do some background research: Whoowns this space? When was it built, and has it been renovated or changedsince that time? Has the space ever been used for something other than itscurrent purpose? Find the answers to these questions by asking owners oremployees, consulting local historical societies, checking the archives oflocal newspapers, or conducting research in the library or online.

You’ll need to spend plenty of time, systematically recording what yousee. Social scientists use the term field observation to refer to this processof collecting information. You’ll find guidelines to get you started in theWriting Tip on page 90.

H O W W I L L Y O U D O I T ?

■ Think about the structure or arrangement of your paper in two parts.First you’ll introduce readers to your site, providing relevant backgroundinformation and a thorough description of it based on your field observa-tion. Then you’ll conclude with analysis, drawing readers’ attention to oneor more ways in which the physical layout of the place seems to influencethe ways in which people use or inhabit it. As with all analytical writing,you’ll need to provide supporting examples and details to illustrate themajor points you make in your analysis.

2 3 8 A S S I G N M E N T S A N D P R O J E C T S 2 3 9

Considerations of style—the choices you make about word selection andtone—are especially important in descriptive writing. Concrete details andprecise, vivid language will give readers a clear sense of the place and en-hance your credibility by showing that you know your subject well. Seethe Writing Tip on page 53 for more details.

Finally, although the primary medium for this project is words, keep inmind that drawings, maps, diagrams, or photographs can introduce read-ers to your site and provide powerful evidence to support your analysis.Remember that any visual materials you didn’t create yourself must beappropriately cited and documented.

H O W W E L L D O E S I T W O R K ?

4S

EE

IN

G P

LA

CE

S

FIELD OBSERVAT ION

For anthropologists and other social scientists, field observation is a research technique con-ducted according to well-established, formal methods. As a non-specialist, you won’t adhereto such strict conventions in this project. But by following a series of steps similar to thoseused by social scientists, you can build a detailed and thorough description of a place.

■ Preview your site and make a plan. Plan at least two visits when you can observe with-out distractions for at least one hour. Decide in advance what times you’ll go, whereyou’ll sit, and how you’ll record your observations. Try observing at different times of dayand on different days of the week to get a sense of whether activities vary.

■ Draw a map of the space, showing the location of key structures, surfaces, paths, ob-jects, and other permanent features.

■ Take careful field notes. Buy a notebook expressly for this purpose, and begin yournotes describing each visit on a separate page marked with the date and time. Lookcarefully at the space and what goes on there, and take as many notes as possible.Decide in advance how you’ll organize your field notes. Many researchers use a two-column format, writing factual observations in the left-hand column and personal in-terpretations and comments in the right-hand column.

■ Review your notes as soon as possible after the observation session, filling in details, words, or other items that you’ve left out.

■ Analyze your notes after a few hours or days have passed, looking for interesting pat-terns or unexpected findings.

Repeat your field observation process each time you visit the site. And as you analyze eachset of notes, look for commonalities and differences from one session to the next.

TIP

wr

itin

g

▼

S T U D E N T P R O J E C TJeni Byars, “The Rhetoric of Animals in Captivityin South Carolina: The Riverbanks Zoo”

In this excerpt from the paper she composed in response to the assignmentfor Project 2, writer Jeni Byars used details from several field observation ses-sions to create a rich portrait of the penguin exhibit at the Riverbanks Zoo:

The penguin exhibit is indoors, with wooden floors and rocks to sit

on. Older children and adults mostly sat on the rocks, and the younger

kids ran around, walked, and climbed on the exhibit. There is a nook

within the wall of the exhibit, a concave glass window that is perfectly

child-sized, and well-occupied. Sounds of splashing water and seagulls

and the smell of fish pervade the atmosphere. A dark brown net draped

on a dark purple wall frames an information poster. There is a feeding

show in this exhibit as well, but the animals are not trained or asked to

perform. They provide an interesting, natural show. One stood with his

wings puffed up and seemed to be airing himself out. Another penguin

rested on his belly and perked upright when humans with food came into

the exhibit. The Rock Hopper variety are the only ones that enter the wa-

ter feet first (the rest dive, head first).

The penguins are first fed in the water and then hand fed, especially

the ones in nesting holes (in the wall). Each is given a multivitamin every

day, and each has a foot identification band. The floor in the exhibit is

made of intercore, in order to protect the birds from “bumblefoot,” or cal-

lous-like abrasions. The air and water temperature behind the glass is 50

degrees (F), and a painted cloudy and blue sky tapers into the distance on

the walls behind the birds. This exhibit illustrates some advantages for

animals living in captivity. Their life expectancy rises from 20-25 years (in

the wild) to 40 years. They also receive aid when sick, even as much as

surgery, if necessary (one was going to have surgery soon for cataracts).

Byars 4Additional Student Work and the full text of Jeni Byars’ paper.

www.ablongman.com/beyondwords

■ Start your paper early enough so that you’ll have time to returnto the site if needed to check facts or fill gaps in your observa-tions. Once you’ve completed a draft, review it or have a class-mate or friend do so, suggesting areas for revision and editing.

Documents

BEYOND WORDS: READING AND WRITING IN A VISUAL AGE … · FYI David Hockney (b. 1937) was an important figure inEngland’s Pop Art movement before moving to Southern California in